Survival
by HesterAntoniaDracolas
Summary: Prisoner, soldier for the wrong side, assassin, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and now Avenger? Yan has been a lot of things in her life and no one ever asked her first. Gifted with powers beyond imagination she must learn to control them before the ultimate battle, but how is she supposed to do that when she can't deal with emotions that progress beyond sarcasm and doesn't really like anyone?
1. Chapter 1

***RECENTLY REVISED***

 **Hi everyone,**

 **I've rated this T as it is for the most part pretty PG:13, however at times it might be a bit violent and there is some death. If you disagree with my rating, please let me know, I'll try to put warnings for the most violent chapters. Anyway, this is my first Avengers fic and it will mostly follow the plot of the movies, starting roughly six months before Avengers Assemble. I'd also say, if you've read any of my earlier stuff, that this is probably of better quality in terms of grammar etc as I am quite a bit older now. Of course that's quite an objective view and I don't have a beta for this so in all likelihood a few mistakes will find their way in. Please let me know what you think and feel free to point out any mistakes if you spot them or ask questions if things don't make sense, it's helpful! :)**

 **Last thing, italics are for her thoughts and a line usually signals a flashback in the earlier chapters (there will be lots, fair warning). I'll try to update every two weeks but i can't promise anything. I might update chapters in between if I've found a mistake or want to add anything and I'll let you know if a chapter has been significantly changed.**

 **Thanks :)**

* * *

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" the agent had a nervous smile on her face. She had a pen clenched firmly in one hand, poised above a pad of paper, ready to record her words.

This was a weak pretence. Yan knew that she was being watched from all angles by hidden cameras and that everything and anything that was said would be recorded for later scrutiny. She was almost surprised that there was not a fake mirror in one wall.

 _I suppose they are too high tech for that._

"Which beginning?" she had paused just long enough to unsettle the agent. Her pupils widened slightly and her heart rate picked up. There was something about the soldier that could make anyone uneasy, it was how she had been trained. It was her predatory gaze with her dark grey eyes like fractured ice or ever threatening storm clouds, or maybe it was the way she held herself, every muscle tensed and ready for a fight like a feral animal.

Before the agent could answer she continued, "The dawn of time is a mystery to me, I'm afraid, so I can hardly start there,"

She blushed, embarrassed, although she knew that she had asked a legitimate question, "I didn't mean – "

But the soldier was not going to let her off that easily. She had decided pretty swiftly that the agent was not worth her time, she did not have the authority to make it worthwhile to yield the information Yan had to offer. But she was never one to wait in silence when there was a game to be played, and thus she had resorted to her favourite defence mechanism, sarcasm.

"The start of mankind, then?" she smiled coldly at her. It was easy to cut short her words when her confidence had been so eroded. "Homo Sapiens? And the death of the Neanderthal? I can tell you more about that. Our race was born through bloodshed and a better gift for survival."

In truth she was bored. She could sense her newfound power flowing through her veins, whispering enticingly to her, begging her to let them come out and play, but she knew she had to go through the whole charade of pretending to be weak if her plan was to work.

"If you could perhaps focus on your own beginnings, Miss…Thirteen," the agent snapped. Yan had succeeded made her angry and she was weak enough to let it show; for a highly trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent she was surprisingly incompetent. "Why don't you – "

"It's a number, not a name," she replied, her smile gone. Having a name was a luxury she was not afforded.

But the agent took this as progress and persisted, "Could you tell me your name?"

"13 is all I have ever been called. You will find it is much the same with the others," she crossed her legs and leant further back in her chair to wait for the agent's next move. Strictly speaking, this was a lie. She had a name she had chosen herself, but there was no way she was about to give it up so easily.

The agent – _what the hell is her name?_ She'd forgotten already – shuffled the papers in front of her, taking the opportunity to cast her eyes down and away from the soldier's penetrating gaze, "what would you like to talk about?"

It was a step back, a retreat, an easy way out that Yan was not going to give, "The beginning of civilisation? That would be an interesting discussion, although it is perhaps debatable that we have achieved it yet,"

The agent expected her to say more, so she did not. But just as she opened her mouth to ask another question, she continued, "My beginning then?"

She – _Pethers? Peterson?_ – blinked, surprised that they had at last got to the question she first asked. Finally remembering her training she nodded encouragingly, a saccharine smile plastered on her face clumsily intimating that she was a friendly figure.

 _God, I do not see myself becoming her friend any time soon. How unconvincing._

"I don't know the answer to that either," Yan mused, tipping her head back so that she was staring straight into one of the supposedly hidden cameras. She smiled at it and raised an eyebrow. She was enjoying this, after all she had been through much worse interrogations. It was so far going just as she had planned it.

"Do you have any family?"

"Dead," she swung herself back up to look at the agent. Her answer was blunt, it was a fact and nothing more.

* * *

The compressed sound of the shot, like a balloon being punctured, or a watermelon being stabbed once, twice, three times. The explosive spray of dark red spread out on the wall behind them. A crimson shadow. Their bodies crumpled soundlessly to the ground. The silencer was unscrewed from the gun. The gun was placed in her mothers' lifeless hand. And she was swept of her feet and carried away from the scene.

* * *

It was a cruel twist. Assassination in disguise. But it's not like Yan understood at the time; she only remembered her age because of the seven candles on the cake, which she had blown out earlier that day. Most of her memories from before that time had been pushed out, deemed unnecessary and of no use in her fight for survival.

"Can you tell me your age?" the agent did not dwell long on the topic of family, though she seemed almost disappointed at the lack of an excessive display of emotion she could capitalize on.

 _What exactly were you expecting? I'm a trained killer not a cry baby._

"Seventeen, give or take a few days," All of her birthdays since that day had been a moment's celebration of surviving another year. Cake was out of the question.

"Date of birth?" she was sticking to facts, apparently giving up on her previous strategy of false chumminess.

 _Here's hoping!_

"I don't know exactly. Some point in December 1994," such personal details were not allowed. They were assigned a number and left to make do with that.

"How old were you when you were taken?" S.H.I.E.L.D had assumed they were all taken. They were wrong, many signed up willingly; the Organisation could be very persuasive in that regard. When you have a gun to your head and a debt to pay, you are willing to do many things to survive.

 _And some people are just that idiotic that they are easily convinced._

"Seven," in her case, at least, they were right. Yan was one of the youngest entered into the programme. Or perhaps, more accurately, she was the only one to survive from that age.

* * *

Chunks of wood flew through the air narrowly missing her as another mine exploded, taking out a tree and sending earth catapulting upwards. She had wrapped a strip of cloth around her head to protect her eardrums from the sound of endless explosions, which ripped through the calm of the forest scattering terrified wildlife.

Her feet seemed to skim over the ground as she sprinted between the tree trunks, dancing over roots and brambles as if she was on completely level ground. Her eyes were well adjusted to the darkness and there was no danger of her colliding with anything other than the other runners.

Yan did not stop to think of them. They were irrelevant and posed no threat at the moment, although it was customary for competition to be disposed of in situations such as this. In fact, she did not stop at all. Her pursuit of survival did not allow her limbs to be slowed by fear or pain of any sort. Feeling either was a sign of weakness and the weak did not survive.

She was nearing the safe house. She knew that there would be weapons there, but she also knew that she did not need them. There was plenty of material around her which could be used and she could be deadly in hand to hand combat. As she passed it she heard a distant scream. Someone had failed.

A shadowy figure emerged suddenly from the gloom. She did not hesitate, it didn't matter who they were. Launching herself off a tree trunk, she leapt with arms outstretched and seized their head, using her momentum to swing round. There was a crunch and the body toppled as she landed. Satisfied that a threat had been dealt with, she hurried on her way. Wasting even a second could mean death during these tests.

* * *

Yan survived that night. As their numbers slowly dwindled (for the few who were forced to join their ranks were far outnumbered by those who failed to survive), she strived for survival and always came out running. That is not to say that she didn't ever come close to death. She took on many a wound in order to win a fight and, although they were rare, she did make mistakes.

"So you've spent a decade in the Bunker?"

"More or less," there were many times when they were taken to some patch of wilderness in the depths of winter to trek through snow, or to a baked plain at midday to die of heat stroke. It was not real freedom, of course. The only way to survive was to collapse into the trucks when the Organisation came to pick up the few survivors, and to fight for the meagre supplies provided for them. It was in their interests to acquiesce to being carted back like cattle to the Bunker.

Sunk under tonnes of earth held in place by the roots of trees, so tall and intertwined that they blocked out the weak sunlight that struggled to even reach the canopy, the Bunker was a maze of clinically grey corridors lined with cells and training rooms. Torture chambers, to be more accurate. If they didn't return to their bunks with several shades of bruises and a few broken bones, they weren't being pushed hard enough.

The Organisation wanted the perfect soldier. They were dependable, replaceable, worthless, but the scientists wanted to craft a slave worth holding onto.

Yan was not bitter. Emotions were a distraction, even anger had to be suppressed and wiped out, and so she did not feel it. She understood emotions, of course, it was important to recognise signs of weakness in your prey. In the complex, any moment that they did not spend fighting, they spent learning of the outside world most of them would never see.

"What do you mean? You have been outside?" The agent pressed her. She leant forward, making a deliberate move into the agent's territory; the merits of always being on the offensive had been drilled into her, sometimes literally. Annoyingly her blond hair fell in front of her face and she wished she could tie it up, chafing at the restriction of the handcuffs which she yearned to tear off.

"There were missions," she replied, neatly flicking the stray strands of her behind her shoulder with a toss of her head. "Tests, I suppose,"

"What did these missions entail?" Peters – _Peters! Yes that's it_ – was speaking softly, as if the Yan was a child and needed a soft touch.

 _Even at ten I was a murderer._

* * *

Her hands were betraying her. It should be so easy, such a simple task. To simply pull back the trigger and let the bullet fly. The thing in front of her was barely a person, it was pathetic to watch them grovel and cry on the floor at her feet. She knew they were weak and would die no matter who pulled the trigger. She knew this. But her hands trembled, the gun was too heavy. She could feel them watching her, waiting for her to fail.

She braced herself and pulled the trigger.

* * *

It got easy. Too easy to snatch the life from the unwilling bodies of their prisoners and her fellow soldiers. She knew what a monster was. They were shown everything that might be of value. They meant for them to see how weak and deluded the populace was, so that they would follow their orders without question. To use the truth as propaganda was something of a skill. They missed the point. For sure, there were a few – there were always a few – who genuinely believed they were fighting towards some greater good and obeyed with a disgustingly obsessive level of loyalty. But most of the soldiers followed their orders because they had to if they wanted to live. It was simple.

So Yan knew that she was a monster, it just doesn't follow that she cared. She did not feel emotions.

"Survival,"

"Survival?"

"Of the fittest," she smiled cruelly, allowing a false emotion to break through. Bitterness was convincing, and the skill of game was in no one knowing you were a player. "They would try to kill us, only the strongest, the fastest and the most…determined survived. It was their way of…removing weakness." She knew exactly what she wanted to say, but it had to seem difficult, so she added in a few dramatic pauses for her own amusement.

"What was this for?"

"Weapons,"

"Human weapons?" for once, she had the right idea.

Yan nodded curtly, "perfect soldiers ready to fight their battles for them, concerned with nothing but our orders and our own survival. In that order, of course, if we failed the mission then we weren't worth keeping."

"Did many survive?" She had unnerved Peters with "keeping", but they were just possessions.

"Few,"

"That must have been hard for you," it was a statement, but it was meant as a question. She was looking for humanity, some sign that the soldier could be saved, be reformed.

 _They thought they were saving the world. They always did, these people, they had to cover up the horror of the death with a thin veneer of idealism. They just wanted to mould the world to their own rules, and they were laughably far from it._

The cost of their experimentation with human evolution would haunt the lives of many, although no one from the Bunker would survive. It was one tendril of a far spread fungus of organised crime and fanaticism, the heart of which was focused on profit. Those at the Bunker were the extremists, the ones who had to push at the boundaries of humanity and play the scientist. And create things like her.

But the Bunker was gone now and they were all gone with it, or sitting in a cell just like she was. And her fellow soldiers, well, they would have followed their orders.

 _Survive, that was what they taught us, survive until we have no more use for you._

Yan knew that every single one of them would be dying even now and in a way she was glad, she could not have them telling S.H.I.E.L.D. what they knew.

Just as she started to answer the agent, the door was flung open and two more agents entered. One of them was holding a gun, pointed vaguely in her direction. She tensed, ready to snap her wrist in order to pull it from the handcuffs and leap forward to kill him, but she saw that it was a stun gun of some sort and so shifted her body so that her barely perceptible movement seemed like fidgeting.

She inwardly breathed a sigh of relief, cursing her instinctive move to kill. It would not aid her purpose now. It was not like she even needed to inflict such damage on herself, after all she could have simply snapped the handcuffs like a toothpick, had she really wanted.

"Agent Coulson?" the Peters seemed surprised that the interrogation had been interrupted.

 _Agent Coulson_. She stored his name for later deeming him to be of importance, unlike Peters, whose name she had forgotten almost immediately after she'd introduced herself.

Coulson moved further into the room and she noticed that his colleague did not lower his gun. She pretended to be surprised, but she was right. Cyanide pills under the back tooth; it was an efficient method of ensuring that no information was passed on to the enemy.

Yan was almost disappointed in them. All those years of learning the art of survival and they fell at the last hurdle to freedom. She was the only one who truly understood it.

"Agent Peters, I will be taking over this interview," she nodded and left swiftly, seeming almost relieved to be free. At a sign from Coulson, the armed agent seated himself on a chair in a corner. He had lowered the gun but he was still tensed to take her down. She did not see him as a threat, certainly not against her. He was there to ensure she stay alive, although they had nothing to worry about; her cyanide pill was long gone.

"They're all dead, aren't they?" She was done playing, it seemed easier to cut to the chase with this agent.

"Yes," his smile came very close to disarming her. The fact that she was still alive already betrayed that she was something different. "But I somehow doubt that we have to worry about that with you,"

"No, I don't go in for that brand of twisted loyalty," She matched his smile but with less sincerity.

He let the silence fall and leant back in his chair. He seemed happy to wait for her to speak.

 _He must have been watching._

"I have a question for you," this time she was the one who would not wait.

"Go on," he made an encouraging gesture.

"You know what I am," he nodded in affirmation and she continued, "and you know everything about them, what they did, or tried to do" he nodded again, "so what is it you plan to do with me?"

"That has not really been decided yet," he replied, "it is partly up to you,"

Yan understood him perfectly, "what do you want to know?"

"We found the others scattered through the woods trying to get to other bases. Yet you were just sitting there in the crater, waiting for us. You are right, we know what was going on there, we had an inside source. And we now have many of their records; they were transmitted at the same time as a signal was broadcast to us. But we don't know what happened at the Bunker, why it was so completely destroyed, and why only you and a handful of their prisoners made it out."

 _An inside source? Now this is interesting._

"I see," She weighed up her options. He was right that she was waiting for S.H.I.E.L.D. She was certain that they would come and saw no point in exerting herself to escape. For the meantime, she would do better if she revealed nothing of import, but merely tested the water until she found out what she wanted to know. She was confident in the knowledge that she could get up and leave any time she wished; they would be powerless to stop her.

"So, why did you wait?"

"I was sure someone would turn up to get me. I saw no point in wasting energy," it was the truth, but it was such a small part of it that she might as well as have said nothing.

* * *

 **Thank you so much for reading! I welcome feedback (including criticism) as it really helps me to improve my writing both retrospectively and in future chapters, so please do let me know what you think :)**


	2. Chapter 2

***RECENTLY REVISED***

 **Hi everyone,**

 **This is earlier than promised! I knew I would forget if I left it til Tuesday though, so I thought I'd put it up ahead of schedule. Incidentally, I thought I'd just add that the views expressed by the character are not necessarily shared by the author, she can be a bit of a psychopath sometimes - the character that is, not me ;). This is probably a fairly violent chapter, fair warning, don't forget to let me know if it ever becomes more than a T rating suggests.**

 **Thanks to all who have followed, favourited and reviewed so far! It really brought a smile to my face when I opened the emails alerting me :) Please do continue!**

 **Thanks**

* * *

When did it start? This feeling of doubt that pervades her mind. Yan had never cared for anything before, except her own life. Why did that moment still haunt her? Human emotion, what a useless thing.

His name was Storm. He was one of the strong ones, the fighters who did more than just follow orders but looked past them to know what they really wanted. They never faltered. They had reached the much desired status of "being ready". When the Bunker perceived you to be as perfect a soldier as they could make you, you were allowed a name.

An alias, really. He told her his real name once, as an obscure reply to a question she still didn't know the answer to. And that gift made her hold her own name as a precious jewel, the last piece of information she would give up, because it was the one thing that was truly hers.

* * *

Yan threw herself out into the unknown, bursting out of the relative safety of the forest and onto the exposed river beach. She dropped down onto the ground, leaning low on crouched legs so that she could sprint off if she needed to, but is not an obvious target.

There was no option but to go straight ahead, across the frozen river and into the dark trees on the other side. But it was a wide, open stretch. There was no cover to protect her body from the bullets and, even if the shells missed her, the black water would be waiting to swallow her up. But waiting would only bring death sooner.

So she went, stretching out her sleek body and running as fast as she could. Her feet pounded on the treacherous ice beneath them, but it held. Her ears were filled with the roar of her blood as her line of vision narrowed and focused upon the gap in the trees ahead of her. The cracking of the ice and of the spray of bullets aimed in her direction were drowned out by this dreadful sound. She felt a stab of pain lance through her body as a bullet sliced past her. It was erased from her mind by the roar. It was just a graze and she couldn't stop.

She was so close now, yet there was something inside her that knew she would not make it. Some deep part of her, suppressed for so long, that rose up through her limbs. A silent betrayal by the few feelings of fear and doubt left within her.

 _Is it worth it? To dance with death as they look on? To be a monster?_

She tried to push through it, but her side was on fire and every heavy breath she dragged into her lungs seemed to burn her. She pitched herself forward, no longer able to tell whether it was a last, desperate attempt to survive or her balance failing her. Either way she knew how it would end. A dark stain on the pure ice, another lost soldier.

But she was wrong. Strong arms wrapped around her small body and swept her up, carrying her on into the forest. In her fear she had not noticed him come up behind her. His long legs give him the advantage over her and he had covered that seemingly endless stretch without any loss of blood. Had she been in her normal state of strength, she would have already snapped his neck, or at least tried, but she just pressed herself against him to take his warmth and let him save her.

* * *

It was not done. They did not help others. It was kill or be killed and everyone else was competition in the game of survival. But Storm was different. Somehow, through all the tests and the death and their twisted messages of what they had to be, he had held on to his goodness.

Yan didn't believe in good and evil, humans could be moulded and broken and turned into whatever they were needed to be. But he was a good person, she couldn't argue against it. They would have never looked to him to find trouble, but all along he had held his hatred within and used it to become a double agent. He wanted to save them all, but he had lost hope of ever finding someone worth saving.

He told her all this, though she didn't know what he saw in her that convinced him to try. She was set to be exactly what they thought he was, worthy of her own name. That night it was purely instinct. Just as hers pushed her to survival, his led him to carry an extra burden. He could have died that night, though she weighed little it was enough to slow him down, but he made his choice with no regrets.

* * *

She awoke, making the transition from sleep to alertness almost all at once. It paid to always be ready. She sat up swiftly, ignoring the dull ache in her side and noted with some alarm that her wound was neatly bandaged. They were left to care for their own wounds; they would never have helped her like this.

She took in her surroundings quickly and found that she was on the plane with the other survivors. There were fewer than usual, survival had eluded many that night. There was a conspicuous amount of space around her, her fellow soldiers were all slumped at the far end of the aircraft. All except for one. She recognised him, of course, if there was anything so normal as role models at the bunker, he would be one.

He leant against the wall next to her. He was a respectful distance away, but still close enough for her to realise his position was intentional. He had one knee against his chest, a tablet balanced on it, and the other leg was stretched out, taking full advantage of the space he was allowed as a superior. He was reading, his black hair falling forward over his face and his clothes were ripped and splattered with mud and blood.

 _My blood._

She had been weak and she was ashamed at it; she might as well be dead already. But when he looked up and met her gaze, his smile took away the walls of her world.

"You're awake,"

"Why?" Yan blurted out. She could see no reason why he would have saved her. She could think of no words to describe her confusion. She would have been overwhelmed by silence if it weren't for the burning need to understand.

He smiled again, "you should rest,"

He turned back to his screen.

* * *

No one had shown her kindness before. It was not his smile that shocked her, but the sheer benevolence behind it. She knew how to use false emotions to trick people, to take advantage of the general populace's susceptibility to naïve beliefs in goodness, to seduce and convince and control other people's emotions. But his smile was genuine.

It did not take her long to conquer her confusion and return to her previous path of survival. But doubt lingered. It was from that moment, almost a year ago now, that she began to feel that there was more to life than simply surviving it.

Yan did not accept that doubt for some time, though she saw him almost every day at the bunker and every time he would smile that same smile at her. He was careful in his revolt against their captors, he knew what happened to those who actively went against them, but he did what he could to spread his message of wanting more.

He taught her about morals, things she had previously considered to be of no use to her. Even now she would probably only follow them only to aid her own survival. After all, you do not last long in the hands of those who claim to be on the good side if you seem to see no problem with being a monster.

He used to teach her to fight. She knew how to kill, but she was not so good at taking someone down without hurting them. She stuck to pure violence and being swift as it had always worked for her, but he taught her more. This was acceptable in the bunker, after all they were becoming stronger, but it was unusual for them to be helping each other.

Above all, he taught her the value of life.

Yan took it as an advantage over the rest, as a means to an end, and tried not to think about what he was getting out of it. She tried to tell herself that it was an act and that eventually he would turn and strike, but she knew there was more to that. In her eyes he was miles above her, there was no need for him to put so much effort into eliminating the little competition she represented.

And then came the moment when she saw he was right, there had to be more than just surviving.

* * *

This was the house, in the suburbs of some American city; it was not information she needed to know. They had given her the orders and dropped her off a few streets away. It was a little past midnight; the soft glow of the street lamps cast pools of light on the pavement and it was quiet, other than distant noises of traffic.

She crept up to the house and turned down the side along a narrow alley. She vaulted over the fence into the back garden and landed softly on a well-manicured lawn. In the gloom she could make out the vague shape of a swing and wild flower beds that spilled out over the grass. She slipped a tool from her pocket and picked the lock of a window, dislodging chips of white paint that scattered on the paving stones like snowflakes. Sliding it up carefully, so as to be completely silent, she folded her body through the gap.

Yan was standing in a kitchen. She hurried through and up the staircase, her tread light upon the thick carpet. She knew her target was upstairs as she had seen a light on at the window and supposed it to be his study. The first door at the top of the staircase was slightly ajar, she peered in and spotted him at his desk, looking at a document and tapping a pen against the polished wood. His hair was ruffled and unkempt, sticking up in wild tufts where he had run his hands through it repeatedly. She pulled her gun from its holster, the silencer already screwed on, and aimed.

Just as she began to pull the trigger, he turned and, seeing her, stood up quickly knocking over his chair and sending stacks of paper cascading onto the floor. She could hear his heavy breathing, see the fear in his eyes, but she had a mission to complete and was not remotely fazed by this.

"They said they would come," he said quietly, standing dejectedly with his arms hanging by his sides, the sleeves of his jumper pushed up to the elbows. She could see that he was resigned to his death, something she had some level of respect for. A quick death is always better than a messy, desperate one as they try to escape.

There was a sudden noise behind her and her target's eyes widened with a new fear, a look filled with horror far beyond anything she could comprehend. Turning sharply she aimed her gun at the child standing in the doorway. She could not have been more than six. She stared at her, little hands clutching the door frame.

 _Too young to survive the bunker. Better to kill her now._

"No!" her target threw himself at her, "please, not my daughter."

Instinct turned her body and her finger pulled back reflexively on the trigger. He fell to the floor, the light vanishing from his now glassy eyes, his crimson blood staining the paper and mingling with the ink that had not yet dried. She turned back to the child, knowing she should kill her, but that suppressed memory of gunshots and blood flooded her mind and she could not do it. She could not do what they had done to her.

Instead Yan picked up the little girl and put her back to bed. She was too young to understand what she had seen. The Organisation did not have to know that she had shown weakness.

* * *

It had so shocked her that he would have died to save his daughter, that he would so willingly sacrifice his own life for another, but she could not find it weak or shameful. So when she got back, she sought out Storm.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it :)**


	3. Chapter 3

***RECENTLY REVISED***

 **Hi all,**

 **Right on time! Thanks for all the follows, favourites etc! I've been beating my own targets :) please continue to make me super happy and send me lots of reviews, constructive criticism is welcomed as I am sadly lacking in a Beta more sophisticated than Microsoft word check.**

 **I must admit that there is a very inaccurate description of Denver in here. I have been a couple of times and have visited the Denver Art Museum, which I loved and highly recommend to anyone who hasn't been. However, I'm pretty certain that the artwork described wouldn't end up there and I have no idea if there is a library within walking distance. I'm British and so am pretty ignorant of American art galleries beyond the most famous, but I was rather determined to follow through with this plot idea. Anyway, I hope I haven't offended anyone who lives in Denver or knows it better than me.**

 **Warning of character death and some angst.**

 **Without further ado, enjoy the chapter!**

* * *

Agent Coulson was waiting expectantly for her answer. He seemed confident of receiving the information he required but Yan was not willing to give him anything yet.

"I don't know what happened. Everything was collapsing, there were explosions. I just ran."

He looked disappointed for a moment, like he knew that this was not the truth and expected better of her. There was something familiar about him, but she couldn't place it. She was sure she had never come across his name before.

"So you have no idea what caused it?"

"No," She knew exactly what caused it.

 _I doubt you would believe me if I told you._

She couldn't tell him yet and reveal the extent of her power.

* * *

If black was just the absence of light, then the sheet of pulsating, rippling miasma could not be described as black. It was the colour of nothingness, so separate and alien from anything human eyes had learnt to comprehend that they could only see black but knew that it was something beyond that.

In the same way it was so still that its stillness became movement that it shouldn't be possible to see. There was no alteration in its colour, no shades or shadows. It was uniform.

And alive. So very much alive. It was aware of every movement, every held breath. Its presence could be felt like a buzzing current prickling across the skin.

Yan had seen it before.

Though unusual, over the years a brazen few had defied orders and had to be executed. The Bunker saw defiance as a waste of a good soldier and so a quick execution was not desirable. Not only did a message have to be sent, so that such an occurrence wouldn't happen again, but there were many other experiments that required human subjects. These unlucky few were thus channelled into other experiments, including their attempts to harness this alien power.

In the twenty odd years that it had been in their possession they had learnt of only one factor that it reacted to: survival. Throw a live person or a corpse at it and they would simply rebound or pass through as if through a sheet of water. But if it came into contact with an injured person it would engulf them, reacting to the brain's last desperate attempts at clinging on to life. The greatest success they had had with this had lasted only a few seconds before being spat back out, dead, but they had seen it start to form armour and caught a glimpse of the raw power they greedily sought.

Thus Yan had witnessed a few thrown into the sheet of death and did not see the potential, only the threat. Of course it had not been a matter of any consequence to her before, only relevant when it was right in front of her. They were fellow soldiers who had brought their own destruction upon themselves in her eyes.

But this time it was Storm kneeling before the scientists, battered and bruised, one of his eyes swollen shut, the other staring blankly into the distance. She knew that he was making sure not to focus on anyone so that they would not accuse others of collusion.

 _Noble to the very end. Damn you._

"You all know that 182 has been an exemplary soldier up to this point," the scientist smiled coldly. Yan was filled with a sudden flare of anger; she hated his smugness and the unspoken words that implied that her friend would still be of some use to them in death. In his defeat they had reduced Storm to a number, he was no longer allowed the honour of a name.

"But he has defied orders and is no longer of any use to us as a soldier," they never specified which orders, the implication being that any defiance was a cause for the ultimate punishment.

She stepped forward out of the assembled ranks to indicate that she wished to speak. She knew she could not save him, but at least she could offer a painless death. She had watched the previous victims writhe in agony, soundless screams sucked from the lungs as the life was stolen from them.

"13, permission to speak,"

She nodded her head in acknowledgement, "permission to execute 182,". She doubted they would allow it, but it was the only way she could send him a message, the only thing she could do to thank him. It felt inadequate.

"Permission denied 13," she stepped back neatly into line. "We wish to make some use of 182 first,"

She allowed herself the merest glance at Storm out of the corner of her eye. He gave her a barely perceptible nod. At least she knew that he understood.

They hauled him to his feet and angled him so that he was facing the black curtain, a gun was trained on him.

She barely registered the bangs as they shot him once, twice, three times and shoved him towards the alien thing. She was so intent on his face. The black rose to meet him and in a second he was gone. For a few moments the thing pulsated and seemed to be forming a shape. She almost began to hope that he would make it through. But then it swirled away and back to its flatness, stretched from one wall to another like a fungus, leaving his body on the ground in a pool of dark crimson, motionless.

They were dismissed and she walked back to her room calmly. She slept undisturbed. All the memories had been buried. All the feelings of loss and anger that had briefly filled her had been pushed out. She had lost the closest thing she had ever had to family. But grief was a waste.

* * *

Yan had five months in between that mission and his death. In that time he taught her more about the value of life than she had learnt in a decade. When on missions they could talk freely, confident in the knowledge that there were no cameras trained on them. They had many conversations and arguments whilst running for their lives.

Mostly she stuck with him because it increased her chances, he was taller and stronger and faster than her and if ever she faltered he would catch her. But she found herself beginning to look forward to the missions.

* * *

They hid behind the embankment, waiting for a lull in the gunfire. Storm was laughing.

"I don't think that this is an entirely appropriate moment to be laughing," she said.

"You are wrong, now is precisely the time to be laughing, when we may die at any moment!" he grinned at her, "remember there is no point in survival unless…?"

"You have something to survive for," she finished the oft repeated statement. "Yes, I know. I still don't think there is anything funny about the situation,"

"The point is to be positive even when things look bad, to keep your spirits up, take all the joy you can from life, you know?" he explained patiently.

"Seems like a waste of energy to me," Yan muttered crossly.

"So, have you given it any further thought?"

"Given what any further thought?"

"Your name,"

"Not really,"

Storm sighed, "come on, it's important"

"Hmm," she was only half listening to him. She was focusing on the gunfire, trying to decide how far away the shooters were.

"Ok, how about Daisy?"

"No,"

"Rose? Poppy? Tulip?"

"No, no and no. Why must it be a flower name?" she snapped at him.

"No reason," he raised his palms to admit defeat and appease her. She was not fooled. "I just think they're nice names. The idea of something beautiful and fragile, made more beautiful by its short life,"

"I do not want a name that describes me as fragile and short lived," she said, feeling more intolerant than usual of his tendency to spout poetic drivel. _He reads too much._ "Especially if it is going to be a name everyone uses. I want something concise that does not display weakness in any way."

He raised an eyebrow at her, "so you want to be called 'don't-mess-with-me' or 'cold-blooded-killer' or 'I-will-snap-you-neck-as-soon-as-look-at-you' or – "

"I said concise!" Yan snapped, annoyed by his perverseness.

"You miss the point entirely,"

"I fear that the point in this case is something I will not like,"

He sighed and put on an exasperated expression, although she knew that he had boundless patience, "the point is that everyone will be using it, not just the scientists and everyone at the bunker. Everyone."

"What do you mean?" she was confused.

"You want to get out of here, don't you?"

"Of course, if we get back to the trucks quickly there should be some food left,"

"No, no, I mean getting out of the bunker. Being free,"

She looked at him sharply. Of all the acts of disobedience, none held such a high punishment as trying to run away. Even considering it was a death sentence.

"I don't really think about it," she considered that a safe answer, although she was fairly sure they were not being observed, it was better not to risk it.

"You should." He looked at her seriously, "I want to be free and not have to worry about surviving every minute of every day. I want to have a job and my own home and to travel. I want to see my family,"

Yan was not sure how to reply to this. Her own desires had never stretched beyond surviving and perhaps being able to focus on it less. Unlike her, Storm was taken when he was old enough to remember his family and his were still alive. He was snatched in the middle of the night when he was walking home from a party, an opportunistic kidnapping.

"What I'm trying to say is that your name is not just for the bunker. You have to choose one that you will want people to use for the rest of your life. When we escape, which we will, it will be your identity. So please, do not call yourself Spike!"

"Spike would be a good name actually," she smiled at him, deciding to tease him to get back to emotions she knew how to deal with.

"Sorry but it's taken, 53 got it last year" he matched her smile.

"Ok, fine. If it must be a flower name. But you have to choose it,"

He fell silent for a few moments and then broke out into a grin, "Antonia,"

"That's a flower name?"

"Technically it's a plant genus, but I like it. Most people wouldn't associate it with flowers so you don't have to worry about it damaging your fearsome reputation," he winked at her.

"Antonia," she liked the way it sounded. "Ok, but I need a shortened version to use for when they let me have a name."

"Why?"

"I don't want them to have it. They've taken everything else."

He nodded in agreement, "how about Yan?"

"How do you get Yan from Antonia?" she asked sceptically.

"You can just about get there, besides I don't like Ann. I have a cousin called Ann and she's a real pain in the ass,"

"Ok, Yan it is." They sat in silence for a while.

"I still do not understand why you see having a name as so important. It is just an arbitrary word by which other people use to label you,"

Storm looked at her in surprise but said nothing. He looked up at the canopy and avoided her gaze.

"Why do you care so much?"

"My name, my real name," he breathed in as if he is revealing some great truth to her, "is Jason William Strand. And You do not even know yours,"

She did not think that he had answered her question but the guns had fallen silent. She could hear an owl hooting in the distance.

"Let's go,"

"I'm right behind you," he paused. "Yan,"

They leapt up and dove off into the dark forest.

* * *

No one but Storm had ever used her name. She was not about to give it to S.H.I.E.L.D. To her it was something only an honoured few were allowed.

Of all the memories she had of Storm, that conversation in the woods was the one that she most often thought about. As she lay awake on her bed in the bunker staring at the dirty ceiling, she considered his words and what he had said about the future. He had said that they would escape. He had thought that they would do it together.

She thought about his family and wondered whether they thought he was alive. Were they still looking for him? Were they lying awake right now, just like her, hoping that they would find him tomorrow?

She thought about his dreams. He had wanted her to be free perhaps even more than he had wanted it for himself.

Then she had a taste of what that freedom could be like.

* * *

The painting was beautiful.

Yan had never seen the point in art, despite Storm's numerous attempts to explain it to her and to celebrate its virtues. She saw it as another distraction invented by humans desperate to elevate themselves.

But this painting drew her in and wouldn't let go. Its soft tones glowed and the waves of colour washed over her like the sea that it depicted. The sad glory of the boat being towed in to be dismantled at the end of its life and the burning sun hanging low in the sky about to disappear.

She had stood in front of it for half an hour with a faint smile on her face, her eyes scouring every square inch and noticing every brush stroke.

It was a mission. Yan was in the Denver Art Museum in an exhibition. When they told her what she had to do, she was sceptical. What skills could they possibly be testing? All she has to do is wander into the art museum, mingle with the other visitors and act normal.

They had dropped her at the corner of the street and pointed her towards the strange triangular building. Modern architecture seemed to be all about randomly assorted shapes. She had wondered through several floors of artwork, feigning interest in the drawings, paintings, photos and sculptures. She had spent more time looking at the other visitors than she had at the art. She had decided that the real purpose of the mission was for her to learn about human behaviours to make her a more effective spy. Physically she was not the perfect soldier, being too small and slight and nowhere near strong enough to win in a contest of pure strength, thus they had marked her down as good material for a spy. Or perhaps this was a test to see whether that was the case. She disliked the uncertainty.

But then Yan came across the painting and was so captivated by it that she had almost forgotten why she was there. She managed to tear her eyes away from it for long enough to read the sign, which said that it was called **The Fighting Temeraire** and that it was by J.M. . She recognised the name. She had been given a perfunctory education in art, which was furthered by the efforts of Storm. She remembered that he was especially fond of Turner.

"If ever you see a Turner painting then you will feel some love for art," he used to say. She had to agree with him, after seeing this painting, that there was something truly mesmerising about the way Turner painted.

Yan wondered how much time she had left to stare in amazement at it.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" there was a man standing next to her, looking at the painting. In her trance she had stopped paying attention to the people around her. She chides herself for allowing her guard to slip. This man could be anyone.

"Yes," he was smiling at her and she reminded herself that she was here to practise being normal, so she returned it shyly, quickly deciding that this was the safest mannerism for her to affect. He was wearing a grey suit but no tie, the top buttons of his shirt were undone. He had receding black hair. By her estimate he was in his 40's.

 **"** It's his use of colour that really does it for me," he said gesturing with one hand at the painting.

Yan nodded and carefully tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, mimicking a woman she had seen on the first floor, "he paints the light… it's like it's glowing," she looked away pretending to feel embarrassed.

"Yes, that's exactly it," he encouraged her. She started to wonder whether he was an agent there to test her, though she had certainly never seen him before. She smiled at him to signal that their conversation was over and reluctantly moved away from the painting. She spent some time looking at other paintings in the room but kept a careful eye on the man. At first appearances he was also just looking at the art, but he glanced in her direction when he thought she was not looking.

Yan came to the decision that she was definitely being followed and that it did not matter whether it was by her own side or another group, either way it was in her interests to try and evade them. If it was her side then it would look good if she managed to disappear. She would rather be seen as a good spy than be seen as good at nothing as in that case she would be at risk. She knew that they would not lose her entirely as there was a tracker in her hip but she had a chance.

So she casually glanced at her watch and feigned panic, as if she was late for something. She then strode purposefully towards the exit, but took care not to seem too rushed. She took the stairs down to the entrance hall and hurried out onto the street. She blinked, momentarily blinded by the bright sunshine, and pulled her jacket tighter around her. They had given her new clothes for her mission, usually she was in the standard issue black top and cargo pants of the bunker.

She chose a direction at random and headed off down the street until she reached a crossing. She paused to take stock of her surroundings and noticed a woman looking at her. She was dressed in a way that suggested she was trying hard to look normal and to go unnoticed; this was enough to cause suspicion for Yan. Once she caught sight of the man from the gallery she was certain.

She crossed the street and took a series of lefts and rights at random, figuring that as she did not know the city there was no point in trying to get to a certain point. She found herself on a busy, main street. This was perfect, it would be easy to disappear into the crowds and lose the various agents she had spotted. She had begun to consider the fact that she may be in danger and this added an extra urgency to her escape attempts.

She weaved through the crowded pavements, feeling slight irritation at the aimlessness of the tourists who were ambling along at a snail's pace and frequently getting in her way. She ducked into a newsagents and pretended to be looking through the magazines. She waited for a while, hoping that she had managed to evade them, but a man entered and bought a newspaper. As he bent over to pick it up she glimpsed a flash of black metal from the inside of his jacket. She knew that it was not uncommon for someone to be carrying a gun, this was America after all, but it alarmed her, especially since she had seen him a couple of streets back.

She needed to make a quick exit but knew that it would seem odd if she left without buying anything so she scrabbled through her pockets to find the change from the museum ticket. She had just enough to buy a chocolate bar.

Yan was intrigued. She had never had chocolate before, at least not in memory. She opened the wrapper as she walked, trying to act like she had done this a hundred times before, and put a square into her mouth. With no frame of reference she couldn't tell if it is good chocolate or not, but it was one of the best things she had ever eaten.

At last she came to a promising building. It was a library so not only had free entry but was also somewhere she could stay for a long time. As she was still being followed she decided she had to change her strategy, instead of trying to disappear she would wait for them to lose interest. If she gave them no sign that she was anything more than a teenager fond of art and books, they would have no reason to stay. And then she would be able to slip away and get back to the black car she knew was waiting for her somewhere.

She wondered up and down the aisles breathing in the musty scent of old books. She pulled them off the shelves and flicked through them, running her hands over their faded covers and bent spines. At last she settled at a table with a pile of books which she had no hope of getting through in a week, let alone the few hours she had. But she worked her way through them, devouring page after page, chapter after chapter, book after book. She read for the sound of the words in her head as much as for the stories.

At last Yan was approached by the librarian who warned her that the library was about to close. Disappointed and feeling strangely disconnected from reality she stepped out onto the street to find that it was dark.

The car was waiting for her on the other side of the road. She hurried across and slipped into the back ready for the interrogation she knew she was about to receive.

They were fairly willing to buy her explanation of her deviation from the mission parameters. They were impressed with her actions, if surprised at how long she had spent in the library, and so let it go and thought not much more about it.

But it was not so for Yan. Her head was still full of a storm of words, with the shining, ethereal ship of the painting, with the rich taste of chocolate. She understood Storm's dreams and she shared them. The desire for freedom burnt within her, it was eating her up from the inside out and she couldn't bear the weight of it.

She couldn't be so totally occupied with just survival as she was before and she knew that if she went on a mission thinking like this, she would die. She had finally reached the point where the risk of trying to escape were outweighed the dangers of staying.

The only way a soldier would ever leave the programme was by death, so her plan was simple: die.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading everyone! Please let me know what you thought :)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey all,**

 **Hope you're all having a lovely Easter, or whatever else you may celebrate/consume lots of chocolate for :) I'm on holiday now so updates will be every week instead! This chapter has quite a lot of violence in it, fair warning, as usual please feel free to let me know if you think the rating should change or if I've made any mistakes as I am still sadly beta-less. The poem referenced is The Retreat by Henry Vaughan, which I highly recommend looking up, it's beautiful!**

 **Also, I'm no artist, but I'd love some drawings for this! Please PM me if you fancy doing any for me and I'll post links to them in the next chapter.**

 **Thanks,**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Death cannot be feared for it will only become a weakness.

Yan sat in the corner of the plane turning the steps of her plan over in her head. She was hoping that when the plane landed in a few minutes the doors would open to a dark forest with plenty of opportunities for her to disappear. She was hoping that it would still be night; it was dark when they left but they had been in the air for a long time.

She listened to the engines whirring, waiting for the change in pitch that marked the descent. She was almost relieved when she heard it, in her stressed state she had even begun to consider the possibility that the plane might turn around and fly back. Not much time passed until the plane touched down, but it felt like a lifetime to her.

It was at least very dark; she could only see a few feet in front of her. It was a sparsely wooded mountainside. It would do.

Her feet reacted automatically to the sound of the starting gun and she plunged down the steep slopes, slipping on the loose rubble. The descent was so sheer that she covered great distances with each bound. With every step she carried herself further from the plane and from her captors.

The first gunshots of the night rang out sending clouds of roosting birds into the sky screeching with alarm. She began to feel a rising sense of urgency, tonight she was running for more than just survival and she knew it put her in danger. She was expending most of her mental energy on coming up with an escape plan. With her concentration thus divided she was at the mercy of any sudden attacks.

She needed something sharp to remove the tracker in her hip. It was near the surface of the skin and a shallow cut would be sufficient to prise it out. But she had nothing and she couldn't afford to stop.

Yan did not see that the ground stop until it was too late.

The mountain side fell away beneath her and she flew out into mid-air over the edge of the cliff. Instinctively, she twisted and made a grab at the sheer rock face. For a few agonising seconds she continued to fall, scraping the skin from her hands as gravity dragged her body downwards, but with a sudden jolt her feet found a ledge and she stopped.

For some time she did not move. She pressed her face onto the cold rock and panted, exhaling white clouds into the bitter winter air. Her body was arched to apply pressure to her feet to prevent her from slipping. Her bleeding hands were tightly clenched around spurs of rock.

Yan had no idea how far she had fallen or if it would be possible to climb back up. She did not know how long she could hang there before her strength failed her and she fell into the abyss. All she could think of is how close she came to death.

After a few more minutes her resolve strengthened and she looked up to ascertain the distance to the top of the cliff. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could just about make out where the pale rock ended. It was not as far as she had thought.

Now fully recovered, she realised this was an opportunity. Had she fallen she would most certainly be dead. She knew she would make it back up but her captors did not have to know. If she could somehow drop the tracker they would think she had fallen and she would be free to make her escape.

Cautiously Yan let go with one hand and, once she was sure she still had a firm grip, she reached down to her side. Her clothes were ripped. At first she thought the blood came from her hands but then she realised there was a gash on her hip from where she had caught it on a sharp rock. She had unconsciously suppressed the pain.

Her fingers alighted on the sharp lump of the tracker and she pushed it up through the flesh to the open wound. Her hands were slick with blood but she managed to pull it out. She hesitated for a moment, once she had dropped the tracker there was no going back. If she was caught without it they would immediately label her as a deserter and they would treat her just as they treated Storm.

She let go. She had no time for nerves.

Yan climbed back up the cliff and hauled herself onto solid ground. Immediately she was up and running, pushing through the pain of her wounds. She was running for Storm, for the freedom she so desperately craved, and more than ever before she was running for survival.

It was almost dawn when they caught her. She had emerged from the forest and was running through meadows, her legs were soaked from the dew in the long grass. She could hear birds singing, beautiful innocent melodies that to her sung of freedom and hope; she had not heard a gunshot or an explosion for hours. It was that pearly, pre-dawn light where a ring of fire lights up the horizon and shadows start to stretch out behind you.

She had never seen such a wondrous sight.

Yan stopped in the middle of a field to watch a herd of deer bound across her path and disappear through a hedge. The very last one stopped and looked at her quizzically, its whole body tensed for escape. Its natural survival instincts overcome by curiosity. She looked back at it. For a few calm stretches of eternity she was held in its gaze, then it leapt through the hedge and the spell broke.

Within seconds she was surrounded.

The sudden sting in her arm was the first sign that something was wrong. She glanced down to see several darts sticking out of her side. She tore them out but the numb, cold feeling had already begun to spread through her bodies. Her limbs felt like treacle as she began to run, desperately trying to stay conscious and evade the blurred figures on the edges of her vision.

The ground loomed up towards her and a boot was planted firmly on her back, pinning her down. She was trapped. Yan knew she had nothing to fear yet.

They wanted her alive.

* * *

It was the burning pain in her side that finally dragged her from blissful unconsciousness. For a few more moments Yan struggled against the rising tide of pain that was pushing away the last few numbing effects of the sedative. The harsh light shining in her face caused her to blink, betraying her awake state to her captors.

She was tied to a chair, her arms pulled awkwardly behind her so that her back was painfully arched and she couldn't fully survey her surroundings. The chair was nailed to the floor so that she couldn't move it. She knew the drill. Sometimes they tortured her and her fellow soldiers to test their resolve under interrogation.

"13," she turned her head as far to the side as she could to look at the scientist who was lounging on a chair beside her.

"Do you know why you are here?" he smiled coldly at her.

"Dispense with the needless chat," she said scornfully. "I am perfectly aware of why I am here and what comes next, I do not require you to patronize me with you questions."

The scientist laughed mirthlessly, "We had our suspicions, of course, ever since that mission in Denver. We knew that 182 had infected others with his dangerous ideas, but **I** could never quite believe it could be you. You have been such… an exemplary soldier, almost perfect,"

She knew what he was trying to do and was unimpressed that he thought it would work on her. She was uninterested in flattery and held no hope that she could grovel her way out of the situation, she would not demean herself in such a way. Besides, she had no information to give him.

"I am curious, how did you find me?" Yan deliberately changed the subject to throw him off balance.

"There is another tracker," he waved a hand as if to brush aside the idea, he was annoyed she had not taken the bait.

"I see, a good idea," she smiled at him. No one could play the game quite like her.

"I can understand why you tried, it must have been hard" his attempt at familiarity was also unimpressive.

"Ha!" she snorted derisively. "What would you know of it?"

He looked at her kindly in a way she did not like, he seemed too confident, "you loved him"

Yan was surprised, but not fazed. For he was wrong, she did not love Storm, for sure he was like a brother to her, but she had almost always seen him as more of an advantage. And she had been angry when he was taken from her, he had been the one thing that was hers. But love, no that was not something she felt, too strong an emotion for her to allow, certainly not in the way he meant it. She decided to stay silent, to see how the scientist will act.

As she expected, her completely misunderstood her silence, "He abandoned you,"

"No," she replied calmly.

"Did you really believe all his lies? We caught him running away, without you. He did not care," he sneered cruelly.

"You lie. He would never,"

"Such naivety! Sentiment is a weakness," Yan could see he thought he had won some great victory over her.

She laughed, "Sentiment, yes, but not mine. I would have left without a thought had I had the chance, with or without him, I care only for myself just as you have taught me. But Storm was too noble by far, it is his own sentiment that would have never allowed him to leave me behind. And thus, I know you lie."

The scientist was silent, stunned that he had lost. He stood up, knocking over his chair, and left the room to the sound of her mocking laughter.

* * *

Yan had to sit through many more interrogations like that one, each more boring than the last. She had nothing to hide, no secrets to give to them, no one to betray. Thus she had treated them as endurance tasks and each time the scientists and generals stormed out in frustration, it was a small victory for her. It gave her some slight feeling of amusement to see their anger and to know just how much she infuriated them

Anything to distract her from her failure.

She had been stuck in that same empty, grey room for days, sometimes tied to the chair, sometimes allowed to walk around freely as if to show their generosity. They wanted to give her false hope, it was their ultimate punishment. She did not fall for such traps, she knew the only way she would survive was through her own skills. She did not rely on others. Only once had she ever been helped and she didn't believe that there were any others like Storm.

Yan was alone, at least for the time being. Someone would bring some water soon, they did not want her dead, just weak. This was enough for her to be certain of her fate.

She was sitting in a corner of the room, her back against the cold, rough wall and her knees pulled up to her chest. The grimy, mud splattered state of her clothes was beginning to irk her and her hair, usually sleek and golden, was weighed down by grease and dirt. At some point she had found a scrap of material and had scraped it up into a messy bun just to escape the feeling of the matted locks on her face.

She was not a vain person. To her looks were completely irrelevant, but she had always considered her hair to be something of an asset and has thus refrained from sheering it off completely, merely keeping it at shoulder length. The ends tending to curl up slightly, disguising the fact that they were sheer and raggedy, having only ever been cut with a knife better suited to stabbing.

She had been trying to remember the words to a poem Storm was fond of. Something about the loss of childhood innocence. She had not been particularly interested at the time, but she was bored and it was something to do.

"Happy those early days! When I… hmm," she spoke aloud to the blank walls, she was sure they were watching her. "Shined! Yes, when I shined in my angel infancy. Before I understood this….place, appointed for… something…"

She could never get beyond the first few lines, the winged words flitted out of her reach and she was not helped by the fact that to her it had never made much sense in the first place.

The door opened suddenly, jolting Yan from her reverie. She surveyed the guards who were entering with her usual blank expression, whilst her mind raced against the rising panic. They grabbed her arms, twisting them behind her back as they pulled her up to put handcuffs on and then marched her out of the cell.

Their footsteps were strangely muffled as they took her down seemingly endless corridors. She did not recognise her surroundings, but everywhere in the bunker looked the same. Occasionally she stumbled and her feet dragged along the ground, treacherously betraying the weakness in her legs brought about by malnourishment and injuries. She was still wearing the same clothes, covered in mud and blood, falling apart at the seams.

They did not say a word to her or give her any indication of where she was being taken, but she did not have to ask. It was clear to her that her time had come, she almost felt relieved, resigned to her fate.

But not quite. There was still a small part of her that was desperately fighting the pain and the weariness and whispered that she must not give in, she must not die.

When they finally left the maze of corridors, they came out onto a stage. She saw the audience of her fellow soldiers, their faces almost expressionless except for the bloodthirsty glint in their eyes. She forced herself to look to her left at the black miasmic curtain that was stretched from floor to ceiling waiting to swallow her.

"You all know that 13 has been…" Yan blocked out the sound of the scientist's smug voice. She had heard this speech enough times to know every word. She had only a few minutes left, but she had no plan. What could she do? She was surrounded and she was weak, fighting would only bring a death more certain than the one intended for her.

It is so often the case that you only remember something when it is the last thing you need to think about, and so it was that the lines of the poem flowed unbidden into her head.

 _But felt through all this fleshly dress, Bright shoots of everlastingness._

No, she would not die today.

Yan spun, wrenching her body from the grasp of the guards and kicking up one leg. The crunch as her boot connected with the guard's face was all too satisfying. As that leg came down she leapt with the other and, twisting in midair, hooked her still shackled arms over the neck of the other guard. He was perhaps a foot taller than her and the full force of her weight pulling him over was more than his body can stand. There was a series of cracks as vital bones snapped and when he hit the ground he was still.

Now she ran straight for curtain. She knew she would pass right through it in her still living state, they had once demonstrated all that they knew of it to them just so that the shock would be greater when they used it to execute someone. Once she was on the other side she would be shielded from the other guards and she would have some time to escape. Very little time in fact, but it would be enough.

Suddenly the world exploded.

Half her vision plunged into darkness. Her ears filled with roaring static. Each heart beat reverberated around her body like cannon fire in the distance. The silence in between filled an infinite stretch of time. Each breath of air seemed to tear off layers of skin from her throat as it was expelled from her body with a fine scarlet mist. The red droplets hung in the air around her. She could see two bullets slowly gliding away from her, crimson comet tails stretching out behind them. They painted graceful arcs through the heavy air. Her narrow circle of vision was rapidly shrinking.

Ahead of her was the black curtain.

Her legs finally collapsed beneath her and she fell into its hungry embrace. Everything was dark and for a moment she was encased in silence so complete that it was more than just an absence of sound. She couldn't speak, or even think, for there was no room for her words. Then all the sound rushed in at once.

Yan was in a sea of sound.

Waves of words crashed over her. She was drowning in a never ending spiral of words. They danced around her mocking her for she couldn't understand them. They were tearing her apart.

Every second of her life was being shredded to the mere words that formed it, taking every part of her until she was reduced to nothing more than a collection of memories, warped and distorted to join the howling swirl of sound.

She could feel the darkness pressing in on her, ready to consume her and eject her lifeless carcass. She was falling, desperately clawing at nothing as she tried to stop the inevitable end of her life.

 _No. I will survive._

* * *

 ** _Don't forget to review, follow and favourite! thanks!_**


	5. Chapter 5 Part 1

**Hi everyone,**

 **Finally getting to the exciting bit, well I enjoyed writing it anyway :) As usual don't forget to give me your opinions and point out any mistakes I might have made!**

 **Thank you very much to Bhagwati for adding this story to their community! I really appreciate it :D and thankyou to everyone who has followed, favourited and followed so far! It means a lot to me.**

 **Drawings of Yan or of the Guardians (whom you'll meet this chapter) are most welcome if you're feeling arty :)**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Knowledge.

No more than a collection of shared memories passed down through time.

The sky above her was a faint pale blue, crossed with strands of feathery cloud that were lit up by the golden sun as it gently sunk into the horizon. The treetops of the forest that flowed across the plain were aflame with the bright colours of autumn. Yan sat on rock made warm by the evening sun, elevated above the forest so that she could see for miles.

"Welcome, stranger,"

She turned sharply to see the creature that stood beside her. She was backlit by the sunset such that she glowed and her waves of brown hair shined like polished bronze. She appeared human, tall and slender and wearing brown clothes of some material Yan had never seen, but her long fingers tapered into claws and the way she moved was too fluid and graceful. There was a hidden menace to her ethereal beauty. She held a bow.

She drew an arrow from the quiver on her back and drew it back on the string, which sang at her touch. She let go and the arrow, whistling, split the air as it dove into the forest. A cloud of birds rose, shrieking alarm calls.

"Who are you?" Yan asked.

"I am Sahifto the warrior of Saranheim, goddess of light, defender against hatred and guardian of the first gate,"

"Where am I?" Yan was angry that she had been transported to this unknown place, and that this strange creature was speaking nonsense to her. "Is this Saranheim?"

"No," Sahifto shook her head, "Saranheim was destroyed ten millennia ago. You are in the collective conscious of the Saran, this place is a memory,"

"Do not play with me, I have no memories like this,"

"I do not lie, stranger, this is not your memory, but an amalgamation of millions of memories belonging to many thousands of lifeforms from throughout the known universe. There is no one place like this, but many. We have collected these memories to ensure the everlastingness of our race."

Yan instinctively stepped back from the goddess, still distrusting her words but sensible enough to understand her power and be wary of it. She did not know why she was there, just a moment ago she had been in the bunker, fleeing for her life. What great force had transported her to this strange and miraculous place? She could see no easy way down from the outcrop of rock that they were standing on, a sheer cliff rose up behind them and fell sharply away on either side. Even from this vantage point she could see no sign of civilisation.

"How do I get out of here?" she eventually asked, seeing no alternative but to seek Sahifto's help.

"How do you want to arrive?"

The strangeness of this question made Yan stop to think. She had an instinctual feeling that she was about to fall into a trap, that she must think hard about her next step lest it was her last. She surveyed the goddess, who was looking at her calmly, a hint of a smile in her lovely features, but could not find the malice she was expecting.

"Alive," she started to grin, "and preferably in one piece,"

Sahifto matched her smile, revealing sharp, pearly white teeth more similar to a shark than to a human. Yan knew she had made the right decision.

"There are two ways you may leave here, stranger. The first and easiest is to go back the way you came, out of our memories and into the harsh reality of a world in which you are no longer living."

 _Her world exploded. Half her vision plunged into darkness. Her ears filled with roaring static. Each heart beat reverberated around her body like cannon fire in the distance. Two bullets slowly glided away from her. Her narrow circle of vision shrinks rapidly._

 _Ahead of her was the black curtain._

Yan gasped as the memories return to her. She was dead. The enormity of this realisation threatened to choke her, to crush her, to force her to her knees. She could feel the inexorable draw of oblivion dragging her down.

 _No, I will survive._

Nothing had happened. She had not even moved. Yet it was as if she had won some great battle and her limbs were weary from the effort.

"This is the black curtain, isn't it? The alien thing." She said feeling the familiar tendrils of rage creeping through her.

"Yes," Sahifto's voice was soft and quiet, "though I know it as the Saran. It is the vessel of our memories and our power, and right now you are its host."

"What do you mean?"

"Should you be strong enough to pass through each of the thirteen gates, then you shall be bonded to the Saran for the rest of your life – "

"A parasite?" Yan interrupted her. She would not be a mere carcass for some alien thing to feed off.

"No, not a parasite. The Saran will protect you, it will make you powerful so that none may ever harm you and it will ensure your survival far better than any mortal strength you may possess. All it requires in return is that you surrender your memories and knowledge to it so that we may all learn. It will give you everlastingness, just as it has given to us."

 _But felt through all this fleshly dress, Bright shoots of everlastingness._

Yan was loath to be dependent on any one thing be it human or an alien symbiote, but she knew that without it she would die and that there was truly only one path ahead of her.

"Alright, guardian, tell me what is the other way? How do I pass through the gates?" she sighed and looked out across the forest. The sun had sunk no further below the horizon, leaving this world suspended in perpetual dusk.

"Listen well and heed my words, stranger, for this is a long and difficult path. I will help you, for I am the first guardian and I must be merciful, but others will not be so. Each gate has a guardian and each guardian will expect something of you. If you are what they require, they will give you a gift with which you may pass through the gate unhindered, if not you will be expelled from the Saran."

"My name is Yan," she replied, surprising herself in her willingness to share her name. "Thank you for your help and forgive me for my rudeness. I have been too quick to mistrust you. It is not a virtue. What do you require of me?" She did not know what prompted her to speak thus, she had never apologised to another in all her years. Perhaps it was her lingering memories of Storm, brought to the front of her mind again by the Saran. He had always advocated humility, believing that it was better to avoid a fight than to win one.

Sahifto did not answer but smiled and raised a slender arm towards the cliff face, sweeping it a graceful arc. As she did so a shining crack appeared in the rock and widened into a doorway full of golden light. She removed the quiver from her back and held both it and the arrows out to Yan. "You have passed,"

Yan took the bow and arrow from her and stared at them in amazement, "But I do not know how to use them,"

"It does not matter, they will be any weapon that you desire and you shall never miss your mark for light flows straight. Use them with mercy and they will always serve you well,"

Yan looked at the weapons in her hands and they transformed, melting down into ribbons of black which twisted into two obsidian daggers with curved blades. She slid them into the sheaths that had appeared on her hips and turned towards the gate.

"How did I pass?" she asked. "I did not do anything,"

Sahifto shook her head, "I am the defender of hatred. To pass through this gate you must show me that you can control your hatred, that you are not blinded by it, but that you do not deny yourself the feeling. You used your rage to give you courage to free yourself from those who would keep you captive, but you apologised when you knew you had been too angry,"

"I see,"

"Now go, for time is of the essence. The gateway is unlocked but you must speak the words to entreat it to open for you. Fear not, for you will know them,"

Yan nodded her thanks one last time and stepped into the light of the gateway.

 _For the light within me open the first gate. For Sahifto the Warrior and for Hatred._

* * *

Yan was in a forest. For a moment she thought that she was still in the same place, but a quick glance around her confirmed that this was somewhere completely different. It was spring there, or some alien equivalent, and the light that had permeated through the thick canopy was a soft green, filtered through fresh, new leaves. The familiar aromas of crushed pine needles and sweet chestnut flowers mingled with entirely foreign scents that were almost cloying in their intensity.

She was standing amongst the tangled roots of several trees, whose great trunks swept skyward, splintering off into hundreds of branches and rising ever higher until they abruptly ended in an explosion of leaves. They were smothered with vines from which budded strange flowers like large trumpets. Bright splashes of colour cutting through the muted browns and greens of the maze of trees that stretched out all around her.

Mushrooms had sprouted in clusters every few metres, their wide, pale caps like stepping stones. Multi-coloured lichen swarmed up the trunks and over fallen branches, which were slowly rotting and crumbling into the leaf mulch that coated the forest floor. She felt as if she was sinking into it.

Some trees hung low, burdened with bulbous fruits ripe for the picking. She knew better than to try them though.

It took her a while to notice the man who was sitting in one of the trees, his bare feet dangling from a branch, watching her eagerly. Startled, she tensed to attack but, remembering Sahifto's words, she relaxed and called up to him.

"Hello there," she smiled, trying to be friendly. He grinned at her and leapt out the tree, landing gracefully on two feet despite the height.

He was wearing a loose, green tunic tied at the waist with a sash and leggings that stopped halfway down his calves. On closer inspection his clothes appeared to be made of plants, as if they had grown straight from his skin. Around his waist there was a brown belt formed of large, round hemispheres like seed pods that possessed a gemlike glow. He possessed all the same grace and beauty of Sahifto and now that they were face to face, she realised he couldn't be older than her. Although he looked as ageless as the last guardian, there was a youthful innocence in his face. Bright green eyes shone out of a face framed by messy, dark green hair that looked like it was last cut with a pair of secateurs.

"Greetings stranger, I am Scallien the dreamer of Saranheim, god of the forest, defender of innocence and guardian of the second gate,"

"Please call me Yan,"

He smiled widely at her, seemingly delighted that she had volunteered her name, "Follow me, lady Yan,"

And with that he bounded away through the trees. Yan quickly sprinted after him, but found that it was near impossible to catch up. He had a long, elegant stride that meant he flew over the ground, effortlessly leaping over roots and fallen logs as if they were not there, his feet always finding purchase. Yan was well primed for running on uneven terrain but she still tripped and stumbled every so often. It was difficult to keep sight of him as he weaved between the trees.

Yet she had never felt such exhilaration from running. Running not for her life, whilst flooded with adrenalin that made her body flee in fright even when she did not feel it herself, but for the pure joy of it. She had never considered that it might be something done for pleasure.

It felt like freedom.

Scallien eventually stopped at the base of a tree, several metres wide, with roots that had spread and curled around the bases of other trees, holding them in a tight embrace. It seemed to support the whole forest on its broad shoulders.

Yan was out of breath and he waited patiently for her to regain composure. He climbed onto a root that was taller than her and leant down to offer her a hand. She accepted it and was surprised by how easily he lifted her up beside him, as if she weighed little.

"We called her the Mother tree," Scallien said, interrupting her reverie. She reluctantly tore her gaze from the ancient tree.

"She is beautiful,"

"All of Saranheim would come to see her," his tone was melancholy, "she is one of our strongest memories."

"Is all this forest from Saranheim?"

"No, it is populated by the species of many worlds, your own included."

He reached up to pluck a purplish fruit from a vine, "Here,"

She took it warily, "Can I eat this?"

"Of course, it is not poisonous," He smiled at her.

Deciding to trust him, she bit into the fruit. The skin burst to reveal dark red flesh and sweet juice cascaded down her chin. It was delicious but strangely familiar.

"It tastes like a nectarine," she said.

"You have never eaten fruit like this before, thus you have only what is familiar to you when you try to define its taste. This is only a memory, after all,"

"Oh, I see," she was almost disappointed, but nectarines had been a rare treat in the bunker so she relished it all the same.

They fell into a comfortable silence.

Yan was filled with a burning desire to climb up the great Mother tree, to look down upon the growing forest as if gazing through her ancient eyes. She was a good climber and she knew she'd have to leave this place soon.

"Let us climb!" she declared and began to scale the side of the tree. She found footholds in the gnarled bark easily and was soon many feet above the ground. Scallien swiftly joined her, almost running up the tree trunk with great ease.

It became a race and although Scallien was constantly ahead of her, she enjoyed the challenge of trying to beat him. He called down to her from every branch he reached, eyes full of laughter, teasing her for her relatively slow pace.

"Must I always wait for you, lady Yan? You make this too easy," he laughed.

"This is not a fair fight! You know this place much better than I do!" she replied, "You must give me a head start if you wish this to be more of a challenge,"

"As you wish!"

"I could do this forever!" she exclaimed with joy.

The moment when they broke through the canopy was like emerging from a dark tunnel. The sunshine was so bright that for a few moments it blinded her and she almost lost her footing. They were still only partway up the Mother tree, which towered above the forest as an omniscient watcher and reached for the sky with arms outstretched.

As she gazed down upon the green ocean of trees that rippled with each gust of wind, she realised that a great amount of time had passed since she first arrived in the forest. She had almost forgotten that she had to carry on if she wished to return to her own world.

"Scallien," Yan called to him. "I cannot continue,"

He climbed back down to the branch she was on and regarded her with a puzzled look, "Why? Are you too tired?"

"No," she shook her head, she was most regretful to leave the safe haven of the Mother tree, "I am not tired."

"Then we should go on! The view is even better from the top," he smiled encouragingly at her.

"No," her resolve strengthened, "I am sorry to leave this place, but I must carry on. I must pass through the second gate, so please let me,"

Something flashed across his face and although she saw it only briefly she was sure it is anger.

"Come, stay a little longer here, it will do no harm," he was back to his charming self, but she was no longer fooled.

"I thank you for your time, I have never really had a chance to have fun like this," She smiled politely at him, it _was_ fun but she would not be controlled. "But I must go, I have to return to my own world. I know this is the only way. Do not try to persuade me otherwise,"

This time, when the flash of anger broke onto his face it did not dissipate immediately. He made a scything motion through the air towards her and vines erupted from the branch and swarmed over her, pinning her arms to her sides.

Instinctively her hands found the cool handles of the daggers. She pulled her arms up, almost dislocating her shoulders in the attempt, and sliced through the tough vines. The blades met so little resistance it was as if she was cutting through water. Once free she leapt towards him, taking the offensive.

As she swept the weapons up towards his neck, the blades elongated to account for the distance she was yet to cover until she was wielding two swords. With surprising swiftness she pinned him against the tree trunk, one sword against the back of his neck, the other pointed towards the front.

Scallien was silent for a few moments and then suddenly and unexpectedly he broke into a smile and pushed the blades away from him without earning a single mark to his skin. He bowed to her and when he straightened up he was clothed not in the scruffy tunic but in elegant, dark green armour formed of many overlapping plates. Tendrils of vines curled around him, unfurling leaves and budding flowers.

"You have passed," he said. "I am sorry to have attacked you thus, but I meant to test your resolve, to ensure that you could not be easily controlled like a puppet. I can see that you have never been prone to being naïve."

Despite his change in demeanour, Yan was still wary of him so it was with a great reluctance that she returned her weapons to her holsters, now shrunk back to daggers from some unconscious demand.

"May I pass through the second gate?" she asked.

"Of course, Lady Yan," he placed a hand on the bark of the Mother tree and a crack in it began to stretch until a doorway formed. "But first, I must give you your gift, this belt is like the seed pods of the great Mother tree, each will protect their contents as if they were cradling delicate pieces of new life. They will open and close as you will them to and will hold much more than would seem possible."

He undid his belt and held it out to her. She couldn't see how it did up, but when she wrapped it around her waist the ends simply grew together, the dagger sheaths also merged with the belt, which sat snugly just above her hips.

"Thank you," she smiled at him. Taking one last look back at the beautiful landscape behind her, she surrendered herself to the doorway.

 _For the rambling forests open the second gate. For Scallien the dreamer and for innocence._


	6. Chapter 5 part 2

**Hi everyone :)**

 **This is a long one! In part to make up for the fact that you won't get another chapter for at least two weeks. I'm back to school on Tuesday *cries* and soon after exams start. Hooray. Anyway, as always, let me know what you think and tell me if you spot any errors etc.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

This time, Yan was ready for the heady lurch that accompanied passing through the gate. However, she was not ready for the complete absence of ground beneath her feet.

She was falling from such a height that she couldn't even see the ground, completely obscured by thick clouds as it was. Her ears filled with the roar of the wind as it rushed past her.

It was strangely exhilarating.

"Welcome stranger!" Yan could just make out the words, she tried to reply but the words were ripped from her mouth before she could release them.

Falling beside her, but looking entirely more relaxed about the situation, was a young women she could only guess was the third guardian. Yan's eyes were immediately drawn to her hair. It was purple and tightly braided into plaits that were coiled around her head. Miraculously, not a single hair seemed to move out of place. She was wearing a dress formed of a hundred strips of cloth of varying shades of purple that streamed out behind her like bunting.

"I am Dyamzun the wanderer of Saranheim, Goddess of the wind, defender of freedom and guardian of the third gate!" she yelled, her amethyst eyes filled with a strange and undefinable joy.

"I am Yan!" she replied, expelling the air from her lungs with as much force as she could muster so that the words could actually be heard. "How do I land?"

Laughing, Dyamzun shook her head, "wrong question!"

She threw her arms up and back, spinning her lithe body into a graceful somersault as she fell. She was completely unaffected by the force of the wind and performed turn after turn, twisting and spinning and leaping through the air without fear or hesitation, as if there was solid ground beneath her feet.

She was the proud albatross diving to the sea with great wings outstretched. She was the delicate leaf that floats so calmly upon the breezes as it makes its gentle descent. She was a wild zephyr blowing strongly across the sky, carving out her own path.

If Yan was not falling to a most certain death, she would have danced through the air with as much joy as her at the wonders of being so free.

"Lady Dyamzun!" Yan cried, "How do I stop falling?"

"Wrong question!" she called back and dove away from her.

Suddenly she was enveloped in the soft whiteness of a cloud, suspended for a moment amongst a thousand water droplets ready to be released for the same journey she herself was so afraid to undertake. In this dizzying oblivion she couldn't even remember in which direction she was falling.

Then she was emitted in a burst of water, completely drenched from the cloud's heavy burden. But just as quick, the water was wrenched from her cold skin by the fierce winds that buffeted her.

"You must try again, stranger!" Dyamzun had returned to her side.

"Will you help me?" Yan asked, trying for humility in the hope that it was what she sought.

"Ask the right question and I shall," Dyamzun gave her a bright smile, but there was something reckless about her now. Yan began to wonder if she was really as in control as she appeared.

"Why must I fall?" she snarled, beginning to doubt if the goddess would ever help her.

Dyamzun looked askance at her and for a moment seemed to consider the question but then she replied with the same two words she seemed to favour most, "Wrong question!"

 _At least there is no limit to how many questions I may ask._

Yan was not used to such abstract challenges. At the bunker everything had been black and white. There were orders, you followed them.

 _Survival did not require much thinking outside the box._

She was truly envious of the ease with which the goddess tumbles, the grace of each somersault and twist. She was so free.

 _Freedom! This whole thing is about freedom!_ This bright flash of inspiration gave her the question she was sure Dyamzun wanted.

"How do I fly as freely as you do?" she asked triumphant.

And suddenly the roar of wind was gone, replaced by calm silence and the soft caress of a gently breeze. There was no ground beneath their feet, yet they fell no further.

"You have passed!" Dyamzun proclaimed with a grand sweep of an arm. "Do you wish to pass through the third gate, lady Yan?"

"I do!" Yan replied relieved that the ordeal was over.

"My gift to you," The goddess pulled a long, gossamer strip of silk from her clothes and held it out to her, the ends fluttered gently in the breeze like the lazy wings of a butterfly. "There is no greater freedom than that bestowed by the gift of flight, may you embrace your freedom just as the proud albatross, the delicate leaf and the wild zephyr! But remember that for every being who loses their freedom, you take a step towards losing yours, it must be both respected and protected by the power of the Saran,"

Yan nodded her understanding and accepted the material. It immediately slid from her grasp and wrapped itself around her waist under the belt of Scallien, now an inky black. She was aware of Dyamzun releasing her from her grip and the magic of the Saran flooding in to support her in the air.

"It is easier than it seems to master it," Dyamzun grinned at her. "Now pass through the gate, you'll know the words,"

The cloud beneath her parted to reveal a shining doorway and a sudden gust of wind blew her into it.

 _For the wild winds that blow freely across the land, open the third gate. For Dyamzun, the wanderer and for freedom._

* * *

Yan was plunged into icy water. She sunk inexorably and the cold weight of it pressed against her chest, trying to steal the breath from her lungs. It sunk through her skin like spikes being driven into her flesh, such was the ferocity of the pervasive cold. She clawed at the water, desperately trying to reach the surface as she was tossed and spun around like a leaf in a storm.

She was being spun so quickly and violently that when she finally broke through the surface she was too disorientated to realise and barely had time to take a breath before she was dragged back under. She couldn't see anything in the murky gloom of the broiling, rushing water and her eyes stung from the salt.

She burst out into air again and this time managed to stay afloat despite the massive waves smashing down on her. Her limbs were numb with cold and weary from her frenzied efforts to stay above the surface. She choked and spluttered on the foul mouthfuls of sea water that rushed into her mouth with every breath she tried to take.

She tried to swim but she did not know which direction to take, she couldn't see land. If she did nothing, she would drown, and she knew her aching body would not support her for much longer. Burning panic raced through her and seizes her limbs so that once more she was thrown beneath the surface. She sunk down and down, not strong enough to go back up. This time she didn't try to fight it but dove down, trusting that her lungs would hold long enough, in an attempt to escape the deadly currents that were churning up the water near the surface.

Yan was a strong swimmer and she was used to diving deep to avoid bullets so she could hold her breath for some time. But as she struggled through this inky black she barely dared hope that she would reach the surface.

Suddenly her fingers brushed up against a rough surface, she scrabbled for a purchase but was immediately torn away. This time the current dragged her up to the surface and she could see the rock jutting out of the water, big enough to provide a safe platform for her.

Through the great clouds of spray and over the rolling waves, she could just about make out a shadowy figure standing on the crest of the rock, looking down on her. She was swimming as fast as she could, but every time she got close to the rock she was whisked away again, over and over. But she forced herself to fight through the pain in her limbs, determined that she would not die by drowning in what was just a memory.

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes since she had entered the realm of the fourth gate, but it felt as if she had been swimming for hours without moving. In vain she tried to fly out of the water, using the gift of the third guardian, but she was too weak and the sea sucked her down in the endless abyss.

Every time she went down she was held for longer under the glassy surface, beaten down by raging waves. As she sunk for one last time, she realised she would never make it to the rock. She had failed.

* * *

"Help!" Yan managed to emit one strangled cry before succumbing to the freezing grasp of the water.

Suddenly strong arms pulled her out of the water and she emerged spluttering and gasping from air onto somewhat dry land. She coughed and retched, expelling the invasive water from her lungs. Something warm was being wrapped around her and she was aware of being gently lifted before she fell unconscious.

"Hello stranger," Yan was woken from sleep by the lilting tones of the fourth guardian. She blearily opened her eyes and pushed herself up from damp sand to take in her surroundings. She was sitting on a beach, looking out at a calm sea, and beside her sat the fourth guardian, wearing a kind of wetsuit formed of a layer of sparkling, blue scales that stretched from her neck down to her wrists and ankles, flowing over her curvaceous form. Her toes and fingers were webbed and ended in long blue claws and there were thin lines on her neck like gills. A great wave of turquoise hair flowed down to the ground and lay in thick coils on the sand. Her eyes were like sapphires.

"I am Safyira the triumphant of Saranheim, goddess of the oceans, defender against failure and guardian of the fourth gate. You have passed, stranger."

"I nearly drowned, I do not see how that is considered a success," Yan said sardonically, a little sceptical of this, she certainly did not feel triumphant.

"Of course, stranger, your goal was unachievable and failure was inevitable. You asked for help and thus you passed,"

"I'm sorry, but I still do not understand you," Yan said, pulling the cloak that had been draped over her shoulders a little tighter. Her clothes were still damp and stiff from the sea salt that coated her skin, cracking as she moved. "And please, call me Yan,"

"Very well, lady Yan, I shall explain this to you. I believe that it is enough to have passed through the previous gates for me to allow you to pass through mine, for it is no small accomplishment. However, you have never relied on another to help you and had the good fortune of never facing failure you could not overcome on your own. You must try and try again, despite the failures you will experience, but you must also know when to accept failure and thus I set this challenge for you. Do you understand now?" Safyira looked almost apologetic as she explained this and Yan was willing to accept her regret at orchestrating such an ordeal for her.

"Yes, thank you," although she understood the goddess's words, she still assigned little value to the assistance of others.

They sat in silence for a while looking out at the sea, now perfectly calm and azure blue, instead of slate grey. Gentle waves lapped at the beach, carving delicate patterns in the sand and uncovering small creatures which scuttled away to safety. The warmth of the sun's rays began to sink into her skin, bringing some relief to her aching muscles. She still felt weary, but was impatient to be gone, so she hauled herself to her feet and unwrapped the cloak from her shoulders to pass back to the goddess.

"No, no, it is my gift to you, you must keep it!" Safyira exclaimed, rising to her feet in one fluid movement and gently pushing the cloth back towards her. Her hands were cool and moist on her skin and sent shivers running up her arms from the light hum of power hidden beneath the surface. "Just as you must be willing to adapt and change to cope with failure so this cloth will form whatever clothes you require. If torn it will flow back together and it will always keep you warm and dry."

The cloak lost its form in her hands and flowed over her body like water, sliding under her tattered and sodden clothes and cutting them from her body like a snake shedding its skin, leaving her bare foot. Now she wore skin tight, black trousers and a crop top made of the same strange leathery material that Sahifto wore. The clothes brought instant warmth and were so light and unrestrictive it was almost as if she wore nothing.

"Before you go, I must warn you of what you will face in the realm of the fifth gate," Safyira said as she raised an arm towards the sea and the water flowed up to form a shimmering doorway. "It is a realm of darkness and horror, and nothing is what it seems, so be wary. I do not think you are destined for failure,"

Yan nodded her thanks, storing the information away, and walked through the gate, relishing the feel of the damp sand between her toes.

 _For the rolling oceans open the fourth gate. For Safyira the triumphant and for failure._

* * *

Yan was once more surrounded by a black deeper than any shadow and darker than any night, such that if it were possible for light to exist within this nightmarish nothingness, it would immediately be swallowed up by the sheer weight of the darkness. It was stifling and oppressive, pressing in her from all sides and trying to jump down her throat as if she too was an intrusion. She couldn't even be sure if there was ground beneath her feet or air around her, such was the emptiness of the cavern.

She waited in the darkness for endless stretches of time, with only the heavy beat of her heart to remind her that only seconds had passed. Then her eyes began to adjust to the gloom and the skeletal shapes of trees appeared in her line of vision. They too were black, just as the ground and the jagged rocks and the flat sky were. All different shades of black. She held up her hands in front of her face, afraid that the colour would have leaked from them, but they were unchanged and as clear to see as if in broad daylight. Even her golden hair remained bright and shining, now pleasantly clean from her dip in the ocean.

She walked towards the nearest tree, grimacing at the slippery feel of the metal like floor on her bare feet, and placed a hand on its unnatural surface. Its bare branches were cool to the touch, and there was no life in them. She recoiled from the tree, desperate to shake off the feeling of death. Her clothes instinctively lengthened to cover her exposed skin, but she couldn't rid herself of the cold.

Yan walked on and on through the strange world, through the forest of identical dead trees who reached out for her with bony fingers trying to ensnare her within their grasp. Ethereal shapes danced at the edges of her vision. The deformed shadows of ghastly beasts stalked her, creeping ever closer and closer towards her before slipping away as soon as she turned to look. Haunting sounds of strangled laughter, of malicious whispers, of the snarls and growls and battle calls of baying hounds, of the shriek of claws being sharpened on glassy surfaces, resounded across the realm. The sound fluctuated, twisted and muffled as it was by the strange acoustics. It would rise to a great crescendo, a hideous cacophony of noise, then fade away until only faint echoes were left. Yet her footsteps were silent.

She drew her weapons, finding some comfort in the familiar feel of a gun in each hand. She did not wish to get close enough to kill with a dagger.

A great wolf blocked her path. A monstrous beast that loomed over her, curved fangs dripping with saliva, vicious black eyes like slits glaring at her, two tails beat the air with a terrible double rhythm. Its long claws had torn great furrows in the ground and it was surrounded by the splintered wreckage of destroyed trees.

The air was rent apart by the screeching of a great flock of black ravens as they swarmed in a great spiral, diving as one around and around the clearing. She was caught in a whirlwind of feathers and claws, pummelled by the sound of a hundred beating wings, pierced by each scream.

At last the cloud of ravens broke apart to settle on every available surface until they were draped across the trees like bats come home to roost. They formed a circle, hemming her in with the wolf. The rustling of their wings was like the rush of whispering voices, or of leaves caught in the wind.

Yan tensed, waiting for the beast to make the first move. She was aware of the shadowy creatures gathering on the outskirts of the clearing, merging to form a pulsating conglomeration of evil intent. She could feel their hunger and malice and fear pervading the air, but they came no closer than the circle of ravens.

It was like a tribunal and she was standing before her judge, jury and executor.

 _Nothing is what it seems, huh? She could have been a bit more specific._

"Greetings, I am Yan of Earth, and I wish to pass through the fifth gate," she was not afraid of the creatures. They were almost cartoonish in their evil and she could feel the fear emanating from them. They had a weakness and she was ready to exploit it.

The wolf grinned, a deep growl rumbling up through its body. It stepped towards her and she regarded it scathingly, taking care to meet its gaze.

"This amuses you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow to indicate her disdain, "You are the guardian of the fifth gate, are you not?"

The wolf stopped in its tracks and the grin became wider and more human. Yan allowed herself a small note of triumph for her correct surmise.

"We are," the words came from everywhere, resounded across the clearing and taking her by surprise. Suddenly the wolf and the ravens exploded in black smoke and swirled into the middle of the clearing, condensing into two figures.

They were both tall and pale with spiky black hair and completely black eyes that seemed to have leached the colour from their faces and were too big to be human, lips parted into grins full of too sharp teeth and long pointed ears. One wore a thick cloak made of fur that hung heavy on his skinny frame. The other a hood made of black feathers.

"We are Ksavier and Thanatai the maleficent of Saranheim, gods of darkness, controllers of nightmares and guardians of the fifth gate." They spoke in perfect unison, one voice shared between two mouths.

"Not defender?" Yan asked, sliding her guns back into their holsters in a pointed display of confidence.

"No, there is some darkness within every being, a nightmare ready to define us. To deny it is dangerous for it will grow stronger unchecked and to accept it is to become it. Thus we must control our demons and use them to be stronger."

"So, what? You want me to get in touch with my dark side?" She grinned at them, "Whose twisted memories are these anyway?"

"This is the gate through which most fail to pass. Many cannot face the darkness and survive. What you see around you is the deepest horrors of the galaxies through which the Saran has passed. The primordial fears of countless races, a thousand ravenous demons that consumed weak prey. This is not memory but the buried subconscious of every host the Saran has ever had, even those who lasted only seconds." The twins said, "And yes, though perhaps that description is a little crude."

"And where, exactly, do you draw the line between monster and weakling? Surely the boundaries are different,"

"Do you not consider yourself a monster?"

"In the societal sense of the word," Yan shrugged, "But I have never had much time for morals and I do not really care. You haven't answered my question."

They merely smirked at her and refused to answer. She was somewhat unimpressed.

"Look, fun as this is, I am growing quite sick of these endless games. Tell me what you want and be done with it,"

They turned to look at each other and seemed to be deep in conversation, though no words passed their lips. Yan waited, though deeply impatient.

"We do not really care who passes through our gate," one said after they eventually turned back to her, surprising her momentarily that they could actually speak separately. "Most do not actually make it beyond the first few steps into this realm, so you have already shown yourself to be strong enough."

"There is just the small matter of the elder guardians requiring hosts who are unlikely to… hmm, how should I put this?... Cause havoc." The other continued.

"Ah, I see, so much for the Saran will do whatever you wish," she said sarcastically. "For what reason exactly? Are you particularly image conscious?"

"You might say that," they snorted, a sound similar to a growl or a bark. They were clearly more amused by the situation than she was. "The Saran exists so that the denizens of Saranheim would not be forgotten. Its aim is both to ensure our own everlastingness and to spread our message of survival. If we become known as a nightmare, no being will wish to be our host and thus we will gain no new information and go no further, we cannot travel far without a host. Besides, it would somewhat endanger the survival of any host we did manage to get if all beings assumed they were a monster from first sight, no?"

"Yes, that does make a fair amount of sense. So, am I worthy of such praise, do you think?" Yan asked sardonically.

"We think that if not, it is hardly our problem," they grinned. "You seem sensible enough anyway. As you humans say 'why the hell not?'"

"Indeed," she laughed, deciding that of all the guardians, they were the most suited to her temperament. "You going to give me a gift now or what?"

"Two gifts, in fact," said one removing his cloak and stepping forward to wrap it round her shoulders. It quickly adjusted to her diminished height and smoothed out, morphing from fur to the same alien material as the rest of her clothes. It did, however, retain all of its warmth, banishing the unearthly chill from her body.

"Yes, and most excellent ones, in my opinion," the other agreed, removing his hood and placing it over her head. It too smoothed out and joined seamlessly with the cloak. Now that they were closer she noticed that they did not appear to breath, or blink for that matter.

"A most worthwhile realm," Yan winked.

"Agreed." They said, now completely indistinguishable. "The cloak will allow you to transform into a wolf, the hood into a raven, and together they will allow you to melt into the shadows as if part of the darkness yourself. But, be warned, for it is not complete invisibility."

"I'm sure it shall suffice," she said, relishing the warmth of her new clothes. "Thank you, this has been surprisingly enjoyable."

"The pleasure is all ours, Lady Yan," they replied bowing, a slight mocking hint betraying their false sincerity. "Good luck,"

And with that the darkness was complete once more.

 _For the darkness that dwells within our hearts, open the fifth gate. For Ksavier and Thanatai, the maleficent and for Nightmare._

* * *

 **Don't forget to review, follow and favourite! Thanks :)**


	7. Chapter 5 Part 3

**Hi everyone!**

 **Gosh it's been a long two weeks! I'm glad to finally get another chapter out :) Many thanks to Hitomi for their lovely review! It really made my day :D and thanks to everyone who has followed and favourited so far! As usual, do let me know what you think and alert me to any mistakes I might have made.**

 **On a slightly unrelated note: I am only going to be writing this story from now on and thus my other stories will remain unfinished. If anyone wants to take up the mantle, as it were, I would be happy to hand them over for editing etc. Pm me if you're interested :)**

 **Who else is absolutely ecstatic about Civil War? Ugh the feels ;)**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Emerging into the harsh light of day after so long in the darkness was a great shock to Yan and she was blinded by the fierce glow. When her eyes finally adjusted, she realised it was in fact night and that the sky above was inky black, albeit scattered with a million gleaming lights. The burning light came from the fire that raged fiercely around her.

Roaring flames leapt high into the air, an explosion of red and yellow and orange and golden light dancing around her. Sparks were spat out into the heavy, smoke filled air and snatched up by gusts of wind which tossed them far up into the sky. Wood cracked and popped as it was consumed by the ravenous fire. Waves of heat rolled over her and her lungs were scolded by the scorching air and the acrid stench of burning caught at the back of her throat.

Reacting to the heat, her clothes shrunk back to the crop top and to shorts, leaving her bare skin to be protected by the cloak, and flowed up and over her nose and mouth to prevent her from breathing in the smoke. Tensing herself she sprung up and flew out of the reach of the flames to where the air was clearer.

Yan dragged down deep breaths of silky air, hovering with ease far above the ground. From her elevated position she could see that the whole, dusty plain was aflame, filled with the death screams of small shrubs and trees already scorched by the midday heat and now torn asunder by the anger of the wild fires. The ground would be black by the time the fire burned out, already ash was swirling through the air.

Scanning the land, her eyes alighted upon a figure amidst the flames, who leapt and danced like a gazelle, revelling in the chaos surrounding him. His bare feet tore up great billowing clouds of dust, with every sweep of his arm a tree was consumed by a wave of fire, with each spin he worsened the raging tornado of flames that burst up into the sky, a tremendous burning column.

He wore nothing but loose, trousers and strips of russet cloth wrapped around his wrists up to his elbows, but the fire enveloped him and twisted around him like a loose robes being blown about by the wind. His crimson hair was aflame and his eyes shone like blood red rubies.

"Greetings, stranger, I am Brisingr the bright of Saranheim, God of fire, defender of energy and guardian of the sixth gate," he called up to her, coming to an abrupt stop.

"Greetings, I am Yan," she replied.

"Will you not come down?" Brisingr asked. "It would be much easier to speak with you,"

"Sounds nice, but unfortunately I am not, as far as I am aware, fire proof," she replied sarcastically. "And I'm not really in the mood for being burnt alive at the current moment."

With a light flick of his wrist, the fire was gone, leaving blackened and still smoking ground in its wake. Deciding it would be churlish to refuse, Yan gently floated down until she was hovering just above burnt soil, wary that she might burn her feet. Upon finding that the air was clear enough to breathe, her clothing retreated from her face so that she could be clearly seen.

"And what do you expect of me?" She asked, impatient to be moving on.

"Watch," he commanded, and then turned away from her.

At first she could not see that anything was happening, but when she looked up, she found that they sky was now the soft grey of dawn. The horizon burst into flaming light as the sun began to rise, stretching its golden fingers out across the land to chase away the last shadows of night. Before her eyes the destruction wrought by the wild fire began to fade away as new shoots sprouted forth from the ground and new leaves unfurled from the healing branches of the trees. Within minutes they were standing on a green, luscious plain, with all traces of damage gone.

"From the fading embers of every dying fire, new life springs forth, such is the power of nature," the god remarked.

"Fire is not exactly natural, it destroys nature,"

"Death is as much a part of natural order as death, is it not? It is just so with fire,"

"I guess," Yan ceded the point. _This is all a bit too existential for me._

"Such chaos brings great power," Brisingr continued, "Power that can and must be used to ensure your chances of survival. But, if you use too much, if you do not instil order into your actions then you will be burnt. Do you understand me?"

"Of course," Yan replied curtly, annoyed by his patronising air, "Do not play with fire etc etc,"

"A human saying, but fairly accurate," the god nodded. "Though I imagine your people are not much used to this sort of power,"

 _A human saying? What the hell does he mean by that?_

Yan was not the patriotic type, if only because she had no particular country to belong to, and as far as Earth was concerned, it seemed far too big a place for her to have any sort of opinion on. After all, she never expected to leave it. But there was quite a lot in Brisingr's tone that implied that what he thought of the Earth and its inhabitants was far from positive. This would have been irrelevant if he was not in the position of choosing life or death for her on the basis of her supposed worthiness.

"Humans are perfectly used to power, they will take it wherever they can find it. Survival of the fittest is the law by which we govern ourselves," she said sharply.

He frowned at her disapprovingly, "I do not see what there is in that you consider worthy of praise,"

Yan rolled her eyes, "I can't help but feel you don't much like humans, what did I do? Was it the sarcasm?"

"Your lifespans are so short, it hardly seems worth it," he replied bluntly.

"I could live another seventy years, if I'm lucky. I'd say that's not half bad," she folded her arms crossly.

"And yet all the beings in the rest of the nine realms will be alive for well over a thousand years," he said looking down at her, "You cannot argue that you are a better choice,"

Yan laughed humourlessly, "From what I have seen so far, I would say you're lucky to get anyone with your requirements! How many hosts has the Saran had?"

"A few hundred," Brisingr admitted.

"In ten thousand years? In that case, many of them cannot have live longer than a few decades. If you are quite so desperate to get a _worthier_ candidate," Yan snapped, her voice dripping with bitter sarcasm. "Then you will have to accept me and wait to get off this world. I am perfectly aware that you cannot go far."

She had shocked him into silence and he looked slightly stunned at the ferocity of her anger. After a few more moments under her furious gaze, he looked away and began to slowly unwrap the cloth from his arms.

"My apologies, lady Yan, I have spoken most harshly. The Saran has never had a human host, so I cannot truly say anything of how you shall be. Please, accept my gift and pass on, may the other guardians be your judges and not I." He bowed to her and passed her the bandages which promptly wrapped around her wrists and tied themselves in a neat bow, now black. "They will protect you from the damage of fire and allow you to control it, so that should you retain order you shall never be burnt."

Before she could reply the gateway opened beneath her and she was torn from that realm.

 _For the raging wild fires open the sixth gate. For Brisingr the bright and for energy._

* * *

 **Greetings, stranger, I am Ca'lun the shapeshifter of Saranheim, goddess of change, defender against silence and guardian of the seventh gate.**

The words arrived in Yan's head without passing through her ears, a most disconcerting experience. In fact, there was no sound at all. She could not even hear her own heartbeat or the sound of her breathing. She stood in a cavernous hall that by the rightful laws of life should have been filled with a cacophony of echoes and yet not even the proverbial pin could be heard.

Before her was the seventh guardian, sitting beside a table piled high with books. Her mousy brown hair was cropped short into a neat bob and her almond eyes were wide and strangely round. She wore long robes with a hem that trailed upon the ground and wide sleeves that almost covered her slim hands. Large silver earrings, inlaid with dark jewels, hung heavy on her delicate ears.

On either side of them, bookcases rose up and up until they passed beyond the boundaries of sight and they stretched off for an eternity in either direction. Their shelves were laden with millions of books, from ancient, dusty tomes that she was sure would disintegrate with even the lightest touch, to books so new that they were writing themselves. She could see the pens moving soundlessly across the creamy white pages.

 **Please, sit.** Cal'un gestured to the chair opposite her and Yan sat down, still gazing around in awe at the library.

 _What is this place?_ She wondered, unable to utter the words to ask the guardian.

 **It is the library of the Saran.** The guardian replied making her jump. **Forgive me for intruding upon your thoughts, there is no sound in this realm. There are words aplenty, but they cannot be spoken.**

 _I do not mind, you merely startled me. I am Yan of Earth,_ Yan thought, trying to focus her mind so that she would not accidentally reveal anything to the guardian she did not want her to see. _Tell me, what do the books contain?_

 **All of the knowledge that the Saran possesses, every memory that has been collected from every host. The life of every Saran who was still living on Saranheim when our final day came is recorded in these books so that it may never be forgotten. All that we know and all that we remember is here.** She explained. **This book tells of the destruction of Xanth, this one of the early Kree-Skrull wars, this one of the fire demons of Muspelheim, this one of the game that can be hunted on the prairie of A-Chiltar III and so on.**

 _Why are they stored as books?_

 **They are not stored in any physical sense, this is only a realm created by memories of learning, a representation of the information if you will.**

 _Oh,_ Yan was disappointed by this.

 **You love to read I see,** the sound of the guardian's laughter in her head was very foreign. **When you become the new host, you must take us to some libraries on Earth! I would very much like to read some of your human literature.**

 _You do not consider our stories to be inferior?_ Yan could not help but be a little sarcastic, it was one of her favourite techniques that she had been taught, and she was still brimming with annoyance at the behaviour of the last guardian.

 **Oh! Brisingr can be terribly arrogant sometimes,** Ca'lun exclaimed. **In the end he will approve of you, just as much as the most eager of the guardians. I hold no prejudices, I believe you cannot know anything about a race other than that you do not know enough.**

 _You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that I will become the new host._

 **Not quite, Lady Yan, but you are certainly welcome to pass through the seventh gate when you wish, and I believe that you will go far. Come, I have something that will interest you,** she stood up gracefully and swept off down the endless corridor. Yan hurried after her, struggling a little to keep up with her swift stride. They walked for more than a mile before the guardian stopped at a group of new looking books, the last one was open and a pen was writing across the page. She pulled out a volume at random and handed it to Yan who began to read. After a page she snapped it shut in shock.

 _What is this?_ She asked, though she knew the answer

 **Your life,** Ca'lun replied, taking the book back from her and carefully replacing it on the shelf, lovingly dusting the top to brush away the non-existent dust. **Hopefully there will be many more volumes.**

 _You have read it?_ Yan asked, now slightly suspicious of the goddess.

 **Yes, I have, and that is why I am letting you through the seventh gate, I have read of the hunger you have to learn, your desire for control of the words you read, you are not satisfied by silence. I know what lies in all these books.**

 _I think, then, that I shall leave you now,_ Yan thought, deciding that it was better that she be on her way.

 **Of course, here, these are my gift to you,** Ca'lun took off her earrings and handed them to Yan. **They will ensure that you always understand what you are hearing and never have to be silent, every and any language will be translated into English for you and translate your words back into that language. Good luck, lady Yan.**

 _Thank you,_ Yan said, ignoring the sting as she pierced her ears with the sharp jewellery.

The goddess raised an arm and a section of the book case swung forward to reveal the gateway. Yan strode through, eager to rid her head of the oppressive weight of the silence.

 _For every word that fills the silence, open the seventh gate. For Ca'lun the shapeshifter and for silence._

* * *

This new realm was quiet, filled with only the gentle sound of the breeze, yet the contrast from the previous total silence made the sound deafening. Yan was standing at the entrance to a cave on a rocky mountainside. To one side of her was a sheer drop and above the black mouth of the cave, the slope rose precipitously into the clouds. The rock was mostly bare, with a few woody shrubs, desperately clinging onto cracks in the rock, and thin grasses that had sprung up against the odds.

There was no sign of the eighth guardian, which left Yan with the choice of either flying up or down, for it was far too steep to walk, or entering the cave. Neither was particularly appealing. There was very limited visibility due to thick fog that smothered the mountain and showed no sign of clearing. Flying blind seemed like a fairly stupid idea. On the other hand, she could see no more than a metre into the entrance of the cave. Anything could be lurking in the inky blackness.

She hovered indecisively. It could be a test of courage, in which case she should really just go for it. _Then again it could also be a test of common sense._

The wind had started to pick up and she began to feel insecure on the narrow ledge, despite her ability to fly. When it began to rain, the decision became much easier. Her gift from Safyira kept her dry and relatively warm, but she was not about to leave solid land with deteriorating weather conditions. Her shorts lengthened to become trousers again in response to the chill wind.

Yan strode into the cave and, seized with a sudden burst of inspiration, cast about for a rock. Upon finding some flint-like stones, she struck them together to create spark. When they landed on her wrist, the strips of cloth lit up with flames and she had a hand of fire to light her way. She flinched instinctively at the sight, but her skin did not burn and after a few silent commands she had adjusted the flames to form an effective torch. Feeling fairly pleased with her ingenuity, she began to venture further into the cave.

The light from the fire was enough for her to see a few metres in each direction and the walls and ceiling were lit up. The cave was actually a fairly narrow tunnel and she walked for some time through the gloom. The ground was uneven and rough and she moved cautiously, careful not to transfer her weight immediately but to test the floor so as not to cut her bare feet.

After a while the tunnel began to slope down wards and the air became moist, as if springs were flowing through the rock nearby. The wall were damp and here and there rivulets of water had carved out curling, twisting patterns. Huge stalactites hung from ceiling, still dripping with condensation which made the flames hiss and crackle as the two elements collided.

In the end she let the fire go out. Translucent lichen clung to the walls, emitting a soft glow that was sufficient to light her way, though she felt as if she was walking along the sea bed, submerged in murky depths.

A rustling, chattering sound began to permeate through the air, echoing up towards her. The source of this eerie noise turned out to be a large flock of bats, hanging from the ceiling, flapping their leathery wings and squeaking at each other. These animal sounds translated in her head into incoherent mutterings about food and darkness and other general bat things, such that she heard both the translation and the original noises.

Still there was no sign of the guardian.

Eventually Yan stopped, feeling weary, and sat down with her back against the damp tunnel wall. She decided there was no point in going further in and that she might as well wait for the rain to abate and then explore outside.

She huffed with annoyance. Where was the guardian? _Perhaps they've got bored and wandered off,_ she smirked to herself, leaning her head back so that it was resting on a pleasantly flat stretch of rock and closing her eyes. She wondered how long she had been trapped inside the Saran. It felt like it had been hours, maybe even days, but she suspected that time did not run that way in these memories. It had always been a matter of seconds in the case of the more unfortunate hosts.

Undistracted by current events her thoughts finally fell to the topic she had been trying to push to the back of her mind: how far had Storm got? She had not wanted to ask the previous guardians, partly because it could risk her chances of passing through and partly because she feared she might attack the one who denied him passage. She could not find him lacking on any front.

Judging by her experience he would have passed through the first few gates with ease, he forgave easily, he was not naïve, he desired freedom above all else and failure was hardly foreign to him. Yet she could not imagine him being able to embrace demons of any kind. It saddened her to think that he might be trapped in that nightmarish realm.

She sat there for a short while longer relaxed in silent and even peaceful contemplation. She was really quite warm and snug within her cloak and she was almost on the verge of drifting off.

Yan was jolted awake by a sudden screeching and the roar as the flock of bats dropped as one from their perches and rushed up along the tunnel. The notes of panic and absolute terror that rushed through her head as their sounds were translated deeply alarmed her. She leapt to her feet and tugged her guns from their holsters aiming them down the tunnel and into the gaping maw of hideous worm-like beast.

She could see all the way down its writhing throat, as its cavernous insides pulsated inducing a slight feeling of nausea. The foul stench of rotting meat pervaded through the air, burning her lungs and causing her to retch. Its long, discoloured teeth dripped and glistened with torrents of acidic saliva that burnt holes through the rock.

Her bullets rebounded of its thick, craggy skin and only succeeded in enraging it such that it began to bellow harsh, guttural sounds that translated into a message of a beast consumed by hunger.

She ran. Sprinting for her life back up the tunnel, she ignored the pain as her feet were sliced open by sharp rock. She could hear a dreadful dragging, slithering sound as the monster dragged its foul body after her; a sound her distracted mind had somehow filtered out before. But she wasn't going fast enough, she could feel clouds of hot, fetid air being expelled against her back and knew she was mere metres from its jaws.

 _I need four feet!_

Yan transformed, thick black hair sprouting all over her body as in one leap she became a wolf and picked up speed, bounding towards the flash of daylight that had now appeared at the end of the tunnel. The extra two paws greatly lengthened her stride and she began to pull away from the creature.

Suddenly she burst out into the light and tumbled straight off the edge of the cliff, having forgotten quite how narrow the ledge was. She changed back to human form mid-air and flew back up in time to see the receding form of the worm as it retreated down the tunnel. She collapsed onto the ledge and knelt their shaking, more with fury than with shock.

 _The guardian is gonna regret turning up at all, bloody bastard,_ she thought viciously, shifting so that she could inspect the damage done to her feet. The cuts were numerous, but shallow, and the bleeding had already begun to abate. At her command, the bottom of her trousers sprouted strips of cloth with which she tightly bound her feet.

"Greetings stranger, I am Tzarakoron the wise of Saranheim, God of earth, defender of intelligence and guardian of the eighth gate. Congratulations, you have passed."

Yan looked up, ready with a few scathing remarks, into the warm brown eyes of the eighth guardian at which point her anger softened a little. He was holding out both his hands to help her up, which she accepted, and there was a calm, gentleness in his countenance that soothed her. Once up, he continued to support her as they walked along to suddenly find themselves in a meadow. He led her to a fallen log on which they perched.

"I would have you know that you were never in any real danger there, I merely wished to test whether you would have the intelligence to run away if you found yourself up against an opponent you could not beat. As I'm sure you can imagine, it was rather difficult finding something you would be sufficiently intimidated by as to not consider yourself capable of fighting it." The guardian explained, self-consciously adjusting his long brown coat, which appeared to be made of bark. He was wearing calf high boots of the same material, which Yan was quite envious of. His hair was for the most part short and spiky with a long plait that came down to the small of his back.

"It is no matter, I do not hold it against you," She waved it aside, she was used to the bizarre tests by this stage and had decided it was waste of time to get angry over it. "Though I am curious as to what that beast was."

"Ah, yes! A most fascinating creature, it is a great rock wyrm, only found in the mountainous regions of Stenth" Tzarakoron eyes lit up at the opportunity to explain it to her and spoke passionately for some time about the wyrm and Stenth and even the galaxy is resided in. Yan listened with some interest, though his words did have a slightly soporific effect on her.

"Oh, I fear I have rather rambled on at you," the god looked embarrassed so she was quick to reassure him that she had found it very interesting. "Well, I'm sure you wish to be on your way. Here, my gift to you," to her delight, he pulled off his boots to give to her, "these will ensure you never lose your footing and are as swift and as agile as a gazelle, to use a human reference, so good luck to you!"

She slid her still stinging feet into the supple, warm boots which moulded themselves to her shorter legs such that they came up to the middle of her calves and transformed to the familiar black, leather-like material. Relieved to finally have shoes again, she levered herself off the tree trunk and onto her feet, feeling ready to run a mile.

 _Would have been nice to have_ these _before!_

Tzarakoron waved an arm and the ground opened up to reveal stone steps disappearing into the earth. _Hooray, another tunnel!_ She thought sarcastically as she descended soon to be swallowed up by the darkness.

 _For the ground beneath my feet, open the eighth gate. For Tzarakoron the wise and for intelligence._

 **Thanks everyone! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review!**


	8. Chapter 5 part 4

**Hi all,**

 **Thanks so much to berbdcat for you really helpful reviews! And also to everyone who has followed, favourited and reviewed so far! :D It is probably the main thing getting me through the mountains of revision I have to do *cries*. Please continue to brighten my day by letting me know what you think and alert me to any mistakes I might have made! I'm going to look for a beta once exam season is over and everyone has more time on their hands.**

 **This is only a short one I'm afraid, but the next one will be extra long to make up for it! My AS exams start a week on Monday and I am TERRIFIED! Well, Marvel is getting me through. Let me just say that Civil War was one of the best Marvel films I've ever seen! Admittedly I would have adored it if they'd given me two hours of the Avengers sitting around playing card games (slap on the Marvel logo and i will watch anything) although that actually sounds kinda fun. But anyway, it was great, 10/10 would recommend!**

 **Enjoy!**

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Yan opened her eyes to find herself in the middle of a small, high-ceilinged room that would have made a perfect drawing room in Georgian London. The uneven wood floor was covered with a faded rug, embroidered with geometric patterns in rich reds, golds and browns and delicate hints of softer blues and greens, and a fire was crackling in the grate of an ornate fireplace. An extravagant chandelier hung from the ceiling casting curled shadows like mystical creatures onto the panelled walls, which were painted a deep blue.

She had a choice of seat between a high backed armchair and a crimson sofa, each supported by wooden clawed feet and covered with kilim cushions, and even a low coffee table to rest her feet on. A desk was nestled in one corner with its chair pushed back as if its occupant had only just got up.

There were two tall windows set back in alcoves with the shutters closed so that the outside world was hidden to her, and the door into the room was just ajar, but her attention was immediately caught by the painting that hung above the mantelpiece. It was **The Fighting Temeraire.** She stood in front of it transfixed, just as she had been all those months ago. It was just as lovely as she remembered and in fact she suspected that it actually was from her memories from what she had learnt so far.

Caught up in her reverie, she did not notice the door open, "Greetings stranger, I am Elikseyr the healer of Saranheim, goddess of peace, defender of salvation and guardian of the ninth gate. Please seat yourself,"

Yan turned swiftly and almost tripped over the end of her cloak. _How wonderfully graceful._ The guardian politely made no mention of her clumsiness and sat at one end of the sofa, gesturing for Yan to sit beside her. She wore a silver gown of a shimmering, silk-like material and her hair was neatly tied back in an elegant bun to keep it off her face, although one curling ringlet had escaped. A silver ribbon was tightly wrapped around her neck and tied at the back in a bow, a jewel was set into the front of it.

Despite looking no different from any of the other guardians, she seemed both older and more mature and fussed over Yan in a maternal way, insisting that she have some of tea which she had just brought in, after introductions had been made.

"I will not keep you long, my child, you may pass through the ninth gate as soon as you wish. I could never deny passage to one so young," the goddess smiled brightly, pouring her another cup of tea.

"I must ask," Yan said, "why do you have that painting there?"

"I do not choose the room," Elikseyr replied, "It is simply a place of refuge that has formed from the good memories of all the hosts the Saran has encountered. It has been made more human for you, as a race not well travelled beyond your home world you would not be at ease in an alien place. The painting is here because it is a source of positive memories for you,"

"I see," Yan said gazing back up at it.

"It is truly lovely, it is clear why you love it,"

She allowed herself a few more minutes of sitting peacefully and sipping at the tea, letting the pleasant warmth of the fire wash over her. Then, steeling herself she stood up to announce that she was ready to leave.

The goddess untied the silver ribbon and lent forward to loop it around Yan's neck, her cool hands brushing against her skin before resting gently on her shoulders. The ribbon settled into the contours of her neck and retied itself into a bow, now the same black as the rest of her clothes.

Elikseyr sighed as she surveyed Yan's face, before reluctantly releasing her from her grasp, "My gift to you will ensure that any injury you may suffer will heal swiftly, no matter how severe, as long as you have the energy to do so. And you shall atone for any blood that your hands spill by the lives you will save with it. It will be your salvation, but you must abstain from being reckless, for it will only heal with what energy you have left. Peace can heal all the wounds of war," She smiled at her sadly, as if she had already foreseen a time when she would not be able to protect her.

"Good luck, my child. May you fare well," she led Yan to the door and opened it to reveal a shimmering gateway.

"Thank you," Yan smiled as she stepped through, and for the first time she felt she owed her safety to someone other than herself.

 _For the peace in my soul, open the ninth gate. For Elikseyr the healer and for salvation._

* * *

The crack of thunder sounded in the murderous sky, one hundred drums in unison reverberating through the heavens as the anger of the god in front of her tore the clouds apart. Swollen and laid low by the heavy burden of the rain, these pulsating, amorphous billows of water and air swirled and seethed and heaved as they let go of thousands of droplets. These tiny beads of water fell through the beleaguered air to smash into the jagged shards of rock that formed the towering mountain peaks Yan stood among.

Despite her gift from Safyira, the weight of the rain seemed to penetrate every layer until her very soul seemed to be drowning. She drew her hood and cloak tightly around her. Buffeted by howling winds, she was balanced precariously on an icy ledge staring up at the pillar of stone that the tenth guardian stood upon, his arms thrown back as he conducted the frantic symphony of the storm.

His legs and chest were plated in twisted sheets of metal with serrated edges and great spikes extending from his bare arms and shoulders, crackling with electricity. The metal seemed to have driven itself up out of his skin, like a vicious exoskeleton. His face was obscured by a helmet topped by a long plume of grey feathers which hung thick around the crest. His hands were covered by fingerless gloves, with which he seemed to be controlling the storm.

Suddenly, just as another terrible thunderclap rolled over her, the sky was rent in half by a hot, white flash that leapt through the air to connect with the top of the pillar. For a split second the whole world burned in the light and the lightning bolt was suspended in time, a jagged rip in reality, and then Yan was thrown backwards against the rock face as the pillar exploded and the shockwave was expelled outwards.

The air knocked from her lungs, she lay on her side stunned for a short eternity. Dragging herself to her feet with the aid of flight, she could hear cracks and pops as her broken ribs shifted back into place and knitted together. The pain that had lanced through her was swiftly silenced by the healing power of Elikseyr's gift, even so the shock remained such that she felt drained.

Where the pillar had been, a crater was now carved out of the mountainside, gutting out the soaring peaks that now threatened to collapse at any moment. In the centre stood the tenth guardian, still resplendent in his strange armour and completely unscathed from the blast.

Deciding to avoid the possible humiliation of being tossed about by the storm, Yan began to run and leap down the rock towards him, rather than fly. Her new boots imbuing each step with a powerful spring that meant she covered the distance in a few graceful bounds, arriving at the edge of the crater without slipping once on the treacherous ice.

"Greetings guardian, I am Yan of Earth," She called out and, although her words could barely be heard above the demented howl of the wind, the tenth guardian immediately turned towards her and bowed deeply.

"Welcome little one, I am Dyasun the wild of Saranheim, God of storms, defender against insanity and guardian of the tenth gate," his voice was deep and cut through the deafening cacophony of the storm just as the thunderclaps cut through the air.

"I wish to pass through the tenth gate," Yan said, wondering whether "little one" was a reference to her height, he certainly towered over her. She had never grown much beyond five foot and it had frequently been a subject of disdain from her fellow soldiers and the scientists. That is to say that it had been, until they had learnt that she was perfectly able to leap high enough to connect her foot with their faces. A few too many had made the mistake of underestimating her in that way.

"I will let you through, little one, if you can stop this storm," the enormity of his demand seemed almost ludicrous to her. How could she possibly hope to stop such an uncontrollable force of nature? All of her newfound powers seemed completely insignificant in comparison. He was asking the impossible of her, and she felt almost sure that she would certainly fail. Almost.

He removed his gloves and handed them to her, "These are my gift to you, should you pass then you may keep them. They will allow you to conduct any source of energy that you might come across and absorb the power to use as you wish. It will also allow you to gather any information that is stored as energy. It is the undercurrent that allows you to use all your other gifts, so that no matter how much of your own energy you have exhausted you will be able carry on and replenish."

Yan nodded in affirmation and pulled on the gloves, flexing her fingers as they shrunk to fit her and morphed into the black, alien leather. Every hair stood on end at the sudden rush of awareness washed over her. She was aware of every spark of electricity that crackled around her, of the immense power of the storm that raged above her, of the faint residues of energy that resided in the stone beneath her feet, of the warmth of the guardian beside her. Her other senses were dulled and crowded out and she saw the world as a web of interconnected threads of energy, sparking and flashing as it transferred from one form to another.

A task that had before seemed almost Sisyphean now seemed to be already accomplished. She held within her grasp the power to achieve anything, the possibilities danced in her fingertips as the energy began to course through her veins. She drew the power of the storm down towards her so that the very clouds were dragged from the sky. All traces of fatigue and pain were banished as her body filled up with the wild, racing power. And still she greedily took ever more and more of the storm into her tiny frame.

She was no longer human. Her soul had burst out of the confines of fleshly imprisonment and soared beyond the limitations of a corporeal form. She was a supernova, bursting into life as she stretched out to embrace the universe. She was chaos, a raging wild fire, a storm, an ocean. She was destruction, sucking the life from all that she touched. She was lost.

 _No. Let go._

All at once Yan was released from the talons of insanity that her drawn her from her very body and out into the far regions of the cosmos. She collapsed, gasping for breath and shuddering with the horror of how close she had come to losing herself forever. And still the storm raged above them. She had barely made a dent in it. She had failed.

The guardian waved an arm and all of a sudden they were in the eye of the storm and safe from both the bitter wind and the freezing rain. It was silent and calm. He knelt beside her and held her still until the shaking had subsided.

"Are you alright, little one?" he asked softly, gently lifting her back onto her feet.

"I…yes, I'm fine," Yan hesitated, unable to find any words to describe quite how it had felt. How exhilarating and how frightening. Fear she so rarely ever felt.

"You have passed,"

"What?" She exclaimed surprised, "But I did not stop the storm, I barely even calmed it."

"And that was not the real test. The power of the Saran is like any other, just as dangerous to the wielder as to those unlucky enough to be on the receiving end; too much power can drive anyone insane. The test was if you could let go when it became too much for you to handle, there is no shame in it." Dyasun said and, though she could not see his face, she could hear the warmth in his voice and knew that he was smiling. She no longer resented being called little, knowing that it was applied with affection.

"I see,"

"Now go, little one, and good luck to you," and the storm swallowed her up.

 _For the untameable storms that sweep across the land, open the tenth gate. For Dyasun the wild and for insanity._

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 ** _Don't forget to follow, favourite and review! :)_**


	9. Chapter 5 part 5

**Hey everyone,**

 **This is a very long one I must say, but it brings the flashback to an end! Fair warning, this chapter is pretty gory and violent and also has some swearing in it. Do let me know if you think anything is a bit much! As always, I welcome your views and delight in each follow, favourite and review I receive! Thanks to all of you for making the exam period bearable :D**

 **Four exams down, eight to go *sighs* and the revision is killing me when it's so lovely and sunny outside! Hope you're all having a more enjoyable time than me but good luck to anyone who does have exams!**

 **Enjoy!**

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Yan instinctively lunged sideways to avoid the gleaming blade that was being swung at her. In a lightening flash it had scythed past her face, mere inches away from slicing through her skin. Her weapons already in hand, her arm came up reflexively and blocked the sword of the soldier attacking her, knocking it from his hands effortlessly. She impaled him with her other sword, piercing his mud splattered armour where the plates overlapped and his defences were weakest. Having dispatched the soldier she whirled round to deflect the incoming blow of another.

She was in the midst of a battle, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of soldiers. The clashing of steel on steel and the groaning of war machines and death screams and battle cries and the thundering of heavy boots intermingled with the animalistic cries of war trumpets and the pounding of drums, setting a crushing rhythm to the destruction around her. The plain they were fighting on had been churned up to a mess of black mud that was swallowing still warm corpses and the burning wreckages of chariots.

There was no clear side. The tattered banners of the soldiers had been abandoned and trampled into the ground, reduced to faint flashes of red, purple, green and gold. There were several different alien races in the fray. Giant rock trolls with moss growing on their craggy skin and precious stones sparkling from their open mouths charged through the masses trampling all in their path and swinging great battle axes and clubs to smash bodies out of the way like nine pins. Leathery, winged creatures swooped down through the dark clouds like hunting eagles to snatch away an unsuspecting soldier and tear them to shreds mid-air, screeching like harpies. Long-eared blue humanoids smeared in war paint and riding many-legged wolves threw spears and roared in languages so indeterminable that even when the Saran translated them they made little sense. Both males and females alike were barely clothed but for a few furs and decorative bones, trophies from former victories. Stocky creatures with very long beards, no taller than her hips ran amok cutting off legs at the knee with bronze, double-headed axes. It was complete carnage.

Yan fought anyone who came her way, whirling her two blades like rotors around her to deflect any weapons launched at her and constantly turning so as to minimise her exposed back. Her boots ensured that she was both swifter than her opponents and more agile on the uneven terrain so that she did not slip in the treacherous mud. She cut them down with deadly efficiency, aiming for the soft exposed parts where the destruction of life was swiftest. Streams of blood of every pigment known to man flowed down her arms and splattered over her lithe frame, like she was engaged in some ghoulish paintball fight, as she stabbed and slashed at her enemy.

She quickly realised that her blades had little effect on the tough hide of the rock trolls. The force of each blow that she landed was rebounded up her arms, jarring her bones. The trolls took more notice of the spray of sparks that exploded from their sides than of her. Their great fists came down at her like a landslide as they sought to smash the life from her, and she had no way of harming them. But they were slow and predictable and it was easy for her to use their mammoth strength to her advantage, dancing out of the reach so that they slammed into each other and they cracked and fell apart.

The harpies Yan could take down with a few perfectly aimed bullets, the bearded dwarves with a fierce kick to the head, and she was quick to rely on her old talents in the despatching of the more humanlike soldiers. Unprotected by armour, their necks were the perfect target, and she would use her height to her advantage ducking under their many arms – for some had enough to fight the whole army at once – and coming at them from the back. Even those who possessed more than the usual number of heads quickly succumbed to her methods.

Despite her fighting prowess many had managed to land a blow as she had neither a proper shield nor any armour. A spear had torn through her side, shattering on impact and impaling her with numerous shards of wood. A harpy had raked its claws across her back, momentarily tearing her cloak into strips, before she had managed to turn and cut it in half. A glancing blow from a rock troll had snapped the bones in her right arm and crushed several ribs. The Saran healed these wounds as swiftly as it knitted itself back together but she began to feel drained from the effort.

The blue-skinned, nonsensical creatures were providing her with the most difficulty however. Their monstrous steeds raised them above the battlefield, out of reach of her swords, and they seemed to have some sort of magical wards that deflected any missiles thrown their way. Several times their ashen spears struck her, once even pinning her leg into the mud such that she was almost crushed by a collapsing chariot. Dressed all in black, and as the only creature there to have no companions she had caught the unwelcome attention of the bloodthirsty, blue warriors and they had become fixated on hunting her down.

She knew that she had to remove herself from the battlefield and that the enemy was too great for her to handle. The presence of the harpy like creatures and the constant barrage of arrows meant that taking to the air was not an option. However, her slight stature meant that she could not see over the heads of most of her opponents and her view of what lay beyond the warring armies was blocked, so she knew not which the best direction to run in was.

Reacting just in time, she dived sideways out of the path of a giant flaming ball of rock and tar. It was a dreadful meteor that blocked out the sun, am omen of the apocalypse. The ground exploded, throwing up great lumps of black earth and sending out shockwaves that spread several metres, tearing apart soldiers with shrapnel.

By chance Yan had got behind the abandoned wheels of a wrecked war machine which absorbed most of the power of the blast and blocked the worst of the debris. Tugging a shard of metal from her side so that the wound could close up, she surveyed the scenes of devastation that lay beyond her hiding place. The crater was already filled with the dead and indeterminate body parts and they were all ablaze, coated with the still flaming tar. The fire spread ferociously, hungrily devouring upturned chariots and abandoned shields and other debris with an unnatural fervour. All the soldiers were united in their attempts to flee from the burning teeth and claws of the magic imbued flames that flickered blue and green, urged on by the magic of the blue warriors. They too fled in fear as they seemed to have no control over their creation.

All of a sudden it extinguished itself having run out of fuel, leaving a wide patch of still smoking earth. It had cracked apart, baked hard by the heat of the fire. She realised that she could use the fire to create a path through the battlefield and escape. Her enemies would part like the red sea. She need only get to another catapult and she would be able to take control of the flames.

The only problem was that the nearest catapult was guarded by her fiercest opponent, the blue warriors.

Crouching behind the now blackened wheel, she had gained herself a few moments of respite in which to consider her plan of attack. Yan watched with interest as a decidedly foolhardy dwarf scrambled up the flank of a wolf and embedded its axe into the beast's back. The sheer blunt force of the blow cut through the spine and the wolf collapsed, its eight legs splaying out in different directions as it went down. Its rider, roaring with cold fury, turned and ripped off the dwarf's head with her bare hands, only to be struck down by a thrown dagger moments later.

It was not the violence of the scene that attracted Yan - clearly the dwarf's attack had been a reckless and ultimately fatal move and was not one she would be attempting herself – but the fact that the blue warrior's wards had clearly failed her. When the wolf had been killed, there had been a sudden flash of green that lasted only a few seconds before dissipating with a crackle. Her keen eyes had noticed this and she swiftly surmised that it was the wolves not the warriors who possessed the magical abilities.

 _A partnership. Or perhaps servitude, seeing as the wolf had no wards of its own….interesting._

She took advantage of her hiding place to use the gift of the fifth guardians and morph into a black wolf. She launched herself over the wreckage of the chariot and headed straight for a group of warriors. She knew she had a very short window in which she'd have the element of surprise. It would not take long for someone to do the math and notice she had the wrong number of legs.

But the time was sufficient. Yan pounced and closed her jaws around the neck of a wolf closest to the already lit missile. The bitter, metallic taste of the creature's blood filled her mouth and she heard a series of pops and crunches that told her she had snapped its neck. Its violent thrashing ceased and she released the now lifeless carcass in order to swat aside its rider who was attempting to fix his spear in her back.

Morphing back to her human form, she thrust her wrists into the flames. A rush of warmth flowed up her arms and she realised she was absorbing the energy of the fire as well, returning some much needed power to her aching frame. Raising her arms above her head she sent coils of fire to twist around her until she was entirely sheathed in a blazing shield of golden flames.

She launched herself into the air, secure in the fact that she was now safe from both the harpies and the arrows. The former was scared away and the latter incinerated just before impact. She soared high into the sky, accelerating away from the ground until she was sure she was far out of range of all missiles. Her speed was so great that her armour of fire was ripped from her, leaving her bare once again. From her elevated position she had a clear view of the entire battlefield, which spread for miles as if the entire plain was covered by a writhing mass of armoured ants.

Gazing down, Yan caught sight of a golden figure standing atop a cliff that rose far above the plain. Guessing that this must be the eleventh guardian, she let herself drift down towards him, gliding along currents of air until she touched down gently on the clifftop.

He was some two feet taller than her and wearing impressive golden armour that was scored with intricate designs that seemed to shift and change like the inner workings of some complex machine. Mesmerised, she struggled to tear her gaze from it. A long, golden cloak was draped across his shoulders and flowed to the ground. A magnificent sword hung at his side; its hilt was encrusted in jewels. All in all the effect was somewhat overwhelming, though the armour was more suited to ceremony than to war.

As the guardian had made no acknowledgement of her presence, Yan announced herself, "Greetings guardian, I am Yan of Earth,"

He turned to look at her and she saw that, though his face was entirely covered by his helmet, his divine features were depicted in detail on it and moved to match the changes in his expression.

"Greetings Lady Yan, I am Glaedyr the mighty of Saranheim, god of strength, defender against fear and guardian of the eleventh gate." He bowed his head, "You fought well for one so young,"

 _I fought well full-stop,_ she thought somewhat crossly, but thanked him graciously wary that it would hardly be sensible to annoy someone who was quite so much bigger than her.

"You chose to leave the battlefield," Glaedyr remarked.

It took her a moment to realise that he expected a response, "Of course, there is no point in endless, senseless fighting. I had too many opponents to defeat and too great a risk of injury, leaving was the most practical action and there was the opportunity to do so. I could hardly have killed every creature on the plain."

"That would suggest that, if you had not had the option of escaping, you would have slaughtered them all."

"Yes," she replied, unabashed, though it was clear that the guardian was looking for a moralistic point of view. "If it is fight or die than I will always choose to survive. Admittedly it is quite likely that my chances would be fairly slim against such a horde, but they would certainly be stronger than if I did nothing."

"Do you not consider that those creatures may be just as frightened as you? That perhaps they are not your enemy? Could you not have helped them? You showed no discrimination in your attacks,"

Yan was beginning to feel fairly irritated, "I could not even begin to tell you how many opposing sides there are in that battle, let alone who belonged to which side! All that I can say is that everyone I came across was as quick to attack me as I was to attack them. So no, I do not consider that I could have helped them, although every creature I killed was someone else's enemy. It is certainly true that they were more frightened than me. Fear is a weakness and I do not feel it."

Glaedyr paused and seemed to be re-evaluating her, "You are by nature a warrior, it seems."

"If by that you mean that my life has been spent learning to kill, then yes, I suppose that I am,"

"And you come to a fight as a warrior. You see only a threat to be dealt with and not the people behind the armour. You would do well to remember that you need not always resort to inflicting death upon your foe."

"Better a quick death than a slow one," she interjected. "In the middle of a battle any injury inflicted will result in eventual death."

"True, but again you are looking at this the wrong way. You should aim to stop the fighting, to disarm soldiers and present another way for them, to protect the innocent,"

Yan snorted derisively, "You cannot argue that there is an innocent side in all this,"

The golden engravings smiled at her as if the guardian was both amused and saddened by her statements, "Fear is not always a weakness,"

 _Don't change the subject,_ "you can't do anything if you are held back by fear,"

"You would not say that bravery is overcoming fear?"

"Bravery is idiocy, doing unnecessary and dangerous things,"

"Courage, then,"

"The same thing, overcoming fear every time you want to do something is surely a waste of time, it is better to just eradicate it from the start.

"And you do not think that fear can govern your actions in a positive way? Prevent you from doing unwise things or remind you of your limitations?"

"Common sense has the same effect without the hassle,"

"You are stubborn," Glaedyr sounded dissatisfied as if he was struggling to correct an errant pupil.

"That is the way I think, it would hardly benefit me to lie about it," Yan shrugged, unconcerned by his tone.

"No indeed," once more they lapsed into silence.

"Is this a real battle?" She eventually asked, not so much curious as frustrated that the conversation was going nowhere.

"Yes, it is the battle of countless armies. It was the result an ongoing conflict between the many tribal nations of Dyofor in the Palyn star system. This battle has been fought many hundreds of times throughout the centuries without any end effect other than slaughter. A victor has yet to emerge."

"Why? Have they not realised they can't beat each other yet?" Yan said, amazed at the sheer scale of waste of life going on beneath her.

"They are all driven by fear, the bad kind I hasten to add, they believe that if they stop fighting they will all die. There is an ancient myth that their planet will be destroyed and each nation has a different idea of how it can be saved. Thus they fight for control in order to enact their plans, without realising that it is they that are destroying Dyofor."

"Oh, that is somewhat depressing," Yan sighed.

"Most wars are futile and pointless," Glaedyr mused.

"Could we not persuade them to stop? Surely it they can see the damage they are causing,"

"Alas, their planet died many of your earth years ago, centuries in fact," He smiled sadly. "Fear is often a source of sorrow. But, you see, this is what I have wanted you to see, that fighting can be pointless. It is the cause of the Saran, to travel through the galaxies and prevent the death of planets like Dyofor. The fate of Saranheim must never be repeated,"

"Not everyone can be saved, we all must die sometime,"

"True, but even one person saved is a victory,"

"I guess,"

"You have passed,"

Slightly startled by words she had begun to doubt she would ever hear, Yan did not immediately react. She watched with growing horror as the guardian began to remove his armour to reveal that there was nothing underneath, a mere empty shell. Or perhaps that she could not see what was beneath as the armour continued to dismantle itself after the gauntlets had been removed. At last nothing was left except the engraved faceplate, which hovered above the pile of discarded armour.

It suddenly went blank and floated towards her. Fairly unnerved, she cautiously reached out to take it. At her touch it changed to inky black. Not entirely certain as to what she should do, she brought it up to her face, though she could not figure out how she was supposed to see out of it.

It moulded itself to her skin, flowing over her face and staying blank despite her decidedly alarmed expression. However, her vision remained clear and she was able to breathe and see and speak as if the mask was not there. Her new visor had brought the shining outline of the guardian into view and she saw that he still stood before her. He passed her the breastplate, greaves to cover her legs and rerebraces to protect her upper arms and shoulders. They lost their delicate engravings and became spikier and more similar to the armour of the tenth guardian.

"This is my gift to you, Lady Yan," she heard his words just as clearly as before. "This armour will protect you so that you can fight without fear of injury and extend your focus to protecting others beyond yourself. It will deflect or absorb most blows that you receive and repair itself if needed. It will also give you great strength to allow you to fight those bigger and stronger than you. Take heed though, for all of this depends on how much energy you have. Now go, I wish you good luck in passing the last gate and hope that you will stop many a pointless fight,"

Yan nodded her thanks and hurried through the portal he had opened for her, happy in the knowledge that she had only one more gate to pass through.

 _For the strength in my heart open the eleventh gate. For Glaedyr the mighty and for fear._

* * *

 _Well, certainly different from the rest,_ Yan thought as she surveyed her latest surroundings.

She was wandering aimlessly amidst a strange conglomeration of ancient ruins, elegant columns towering up and up until they vanished into swirling mist or lying where they had fallen, split into great even sections. Intricately carved arches joined onto half-finished walls, staircases stopped suddenly halfway up or led down from one broken layer to another, flawless statues were placed everywhere, some humanoid some far from it, with expressions of anguish and fear depicted on their lovely features.

And all of it was crafted from the same perfect white marble, so bright it hurt her eyes, and sinking into the white mist which clung heavily to the ground and drifted in great, swirling clouds across her path such that most of the realm was obscured. She could see clearly for no more than a few metres in each direction and she frequently found herself teetering on the edge of a precipice or her way blocked by the walls of a ruined building.

Dressed head to toe in black as she was, she was keenly aware that she had little chance of camouflaging herself in this ghost city. Even if she was use the powers of the fifth guardians and turn invisible, she would be easily spotted for there were no shadows, as if all the light had been removed.

It was a maze. A dreadful, incoherent maze through a broken, ghost city long abandoned and yet perfectly, hideously preserved with each path indistinguishable from the next. She had no way of knowing whether she had passed by a ruin a hundred times before or was seeing it for the first time. It alarmed her much more than the supposed realm of nightmares ever could.

Eventually Yan came to a building that seemed set apart from all the rest, neither ruined or in some state of incompletion. It rose majestically, supported by fluted columns with extravagant capitals carved with vines and fruit and birds, and mounted upon a plinth of nine steps, each half a metre high. It was grand and austere, like a temple, and it was thankfully free of the disturbing statues.

She climbed the steps with great ease despite their height, leaping up each one with a marvellous spring in her step imbued by her boots, and had soon passed between the columns, each one wider than she was tall, and into the inner sanctuary. This too was lavishly decorated with ornate carvings. At the far end of the cavernous hall was an imposing marble throne in which sat the twelfth guardian.

For a few moments, Yan had thought that the goddess was merely another statue, for neither her clothes nor her skin nor even her blank, pupil-less eyes had any pigment other than bright brilliant white and she sat so still that she didn't seem alive. She wore a long dress which hung low, exposing her ivory shoulders, and whose train flowed down the steps leading up to her throne. Her hair was delicately plaited and twisted around the crystalline spikes of her crown and large diamonds were set into the many rings adorning her slim fingers, as if to draw attention away from her vicious claws.

 _I should imagine this is the elder whose opinion Ksavier and Thanatai were so concerned with,_ she thought feeling ever so slightly intimidated by the alien creature before her. She decided that, despite her disdain for what she saw as an insufferably sycophantic move, it would be a wise move to bow. _Let's hope that I've learnt a little more about wisdom from Tzarakoron than just the digestive habits of rock wyrms…_

"I am Krys-tal the ephemeral of Saranheim, goddess of mysteries, protector of divinity and guardian of the twelth gate. State your intentions stranger," her words felt like spikes of ice as if the very air with which she spoke froze within her lungs. It was not so much arrogance as an indefatigable awareness of superiority which marked her tone.

"I am Yan of Earth," she rose fluidly, already in possession of the alien grace of the guardians, "and I want to survive,"

"That is all?" the guardian asked, her tone betraying nothing of her opinion on the statement.

"Is that not everything?" Yan replied.

"Insufficient," and without a single movement or even a change in expression, the goddess inflicted her punishment for what was apparently an unacceptable answer. A painful, icy numbness flowed up through the soles of her feet and the colour leached away from her as her legs solidified, undergoing a dreadful metamorphose into marble.

She stood in shock, unable to move and unable to look away from the inexorable march of white as her flesh was consumed by stone. By her calculation she had but minutes before it reached her vital organs. The realisation that every one of those ghastly statues had once been something living and breathing, now forever encased in brutal, unforgiving marble, came upon her like a dreadful blow leaving her feeling empty, as if her very insides had been viciously torn from her.

The horrific cruelty of such an end and the now ugly passiveness of the deity in front of her, sparked within her a feeling of great injustice. Not once had she allowed herself to bemoan her lot, to ever feel any pity for herself or anyone else no matter how dire the situation, believing it to be unproductive. But this, this was so wasteful, their deaths so pointless, that she felt angry not just because of the imminent arrival of her own death, alone in this freezing wasteland, but for them. The thousands of nameless creatures whose souls were trapped out there.

"It would have been better to fail at the first gate than to have made it all this way just to be struck down by you," Yan spat with fury, for once allowing the emotions to flood her, to fill her words.

"You are insufficient," still that calm, blank face.

"And who are you to judge? What would you know of me and my supposed weakness?" she snarled. "You think that you are better than me! You, sitting upon your throne built up on the suffering of others! It's cruel and heartless and meaningless! So fucking pointless!"

At last she had provoked an expression from that stony gaze, a slight narrowing of the eyes, enough to tell her she had gone too far. And yet she had nothing to lose. She would have continued to rid herself of the vile anger that boiled inside of her, but as soon as she paused for breath her tongue was held still by an unseen force. She had been silenced.

In an instant Yan had her guns in her hands and was firing at the goddess, hoping to shatter her into a thousand pictures, envisaging her demise with vicious glee. But the bullets did not even come close to the mark, swiped aside so that they struck the walls and rebounded filling the hall with echoes and the crack that came with each squeeze of the trigger.

Then the guns were wrenched from her grasp and thrown clattering across the floor out of her reach. And her hands too succumbed to the fate of petrification and fell to her sides dragged down by the weight of stone. And so she had nothing left but her wild, panicked thoughts, unable even to protest. None of her newly granted powers could help her now. Utterly helpless.

 _I've failed. I've failed. I've failed._ It was all she could think. _Where did I go wrong? Why? Why? Why?_

The marble had reached her elbows now and was halfway up her thighs, she was drowning in stone. Dying in the slowly rising floodwaters. She had given up.

"Have you truly learnt so little?" the guardian at last moved, gliding down the steps and across the gleaming floor towards her.

The furious wild fire that had raged uncontrollably in Yan veins was extinguished with the cold breath of her words. Her mind was cleared of doubt like the heavy settling of silt on the riverbed which in her idiocy she had churned up. Just as the fog had misled her and obscured her path, so she had deceived herself that she had done all that she could. It was not that Krys-tal had failed her for no reason other than mere whim, but that she had ignored every principle that had allowed her to pass through the other gates.

She had allowed her hatred to rule her, she had forgotten that it was freedom she desired not just survival, she had simply given up at the first sign of failure, she had allowed herself to be silenced, she had certainly not been wise, and she had been weak, had allowed the wrong kind of fear to take control of her; the list went on. But she would not fail again.

Yan closed her eyes and stifled her panic, forcibly clearing her mind and breathing deeply. She filtered out every feeling but the creeping cold of the marble, focusing her entire self upon it. And then she began to fight back. Channelling all the heat of her now exorcised anger, she drove back the stone and tore her flesh free of the aching numbness.

"It is a miracle that the Saran ever gets a host," she said breathlessly, opening her eyes to hold the gaze of the goddess. "Is it this difficult for everyone, or there just something particularly objectionable about me?"

To her great surprise, Krys-tal actually broke into a smile bringing some much needed warmth to her face, "You are so changeable, human,"

For once, Yan took no offence at the patronising reference to her humanity, she was used to it by now, "I was kinda running out of time, there didn't seem to be much point in wasting time on letting my anger run its course."

"Give me your hands," she obeyed unthinkingly.

Black spirals appeared like ink stains on the backs of her hands and spread across her body, like a ribbon was being twined around her body. It split off into more tendrils like a shoot dividing into stems and then tapered off into spikes two of which curled up her cheeks and others along the curve of her hips. For a moment they seemed to float, shimmering, just above the surface but then they sunk and solidified into tattoos.

"This is the final gift that you shall receive from the guardians, young one, for you have passed the tests of every gate and proven yourself worthy to be the host of the Saran. This is the mark of Saran and any who know of us will instantly know that you are the host. It will allow you to store all of the other gifts should you not have need for them. Thus you may hide the true extent of your power and walk among your kind unnoticed."

"Thank you," Yan said. "Will I ever see you again?"

"If ever you should need us, we shall be ready to give advice and access to the great store of knowledge the Saran has amassed over the millennia. All you have to do is say the words. Now go, we have held you captive long enough, though only a few minutes have passed in your realm. Good luck, Lady Yan, may your life be long and full of joy," the goddess let go of her hands and her surroundings faded rapidly until she was once more surrounded by darkness.

 _For the powers that cannot be understood open the twelfth gate. For Krys-tal the ephemeral and for divinity._

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review!**


	10. Chapter 6

**Hi everyone :)**

 **Almost didn't manage to post today, I've been asleep pretty much all day :/ oh the joys of hayfever and general illness! Anyway, as always do alert me to any mistakes I might have made and let me know what you think :)**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

When Yan returned to reality she blew up the bunker.

It had not been entirely her first intention, after all she was still inside it, but the sudden rush of power flowing through her limbs was akin to waking from a dream and remembering how easy it actually is to move. Without really thinking she had sucked all the energy from the bunker, plunging it into instance darkness as the generators blew and then had released it all at once.

The shockwave of energy, combined with the strain placed upon the wires and generators was enough to cause an explosion. A single spark and she was aflame, sending great balls of fire screaming down the corridors. It was not long before the fire reached the rooms containing piles of weapons, some more experimental and volatile than others, and the end effect was that the bunker was torn in half and thrown into the air, displacing tonnes of earth and shattering trees.

This did not happen all at once. In fact she had long enough to come to her senses and gain some semblance of control to get herself out. It would have been quite disastrous if she had managed to blow herself up within five minutes of regaining life. It was also enough time for her to remember the words of the eleventh guardian and make some effort towards corralling her fellow soldiers out of the bunker. She made no such effort for the scientists, her compassion would only stretch so far.

Then, standing in the middle of a crater that was gradually being swallowed by a dense mixture of ash and snow, she watched the retreating figures of the fleeing soldiers and wondered what she should do next.

She felt surprisingly clean and pure, as if a lot of metaphorical dirt had been washed from her veins as well as the actual grime that had so disgustingly coated her skin. That skin was now bright and smooth, all marks of former injuries smoothed away, and even her hair seemed lustrous and soft as if it had gained a new lease of life. In fact it had grown and now fell several centimetres further down her shoulders. She plaited it neatly, marvelling at the feel of it slipping between her fingers.

Returning her focus to more important matters, she began to sift through the information she had absorbed from the bunker's computers. Ignoring medical and progress reports on the soldiers, weapon blueprints, locations and other data of other bases and stored communications between agents, she finally came across the information she desired, S.H.I.E.L.D.

Of course she knew about S.H.I.E.L.D., it had been explained in detail to them and portrayed as one of their main enemies, an offshoot of the government both more powerful and in possession of an unhealthy interest in the organisation. It sounded perfect.

Wandering aimlessly through the wreckage of the bunker, Yan came across enough parts to build a radio. Then, using frequencies she had taken from the computers which were described as "frequently used by S.H.I.E.L.D.", she sent pulses of energy in Morse code. She sent her coordinates and a considerable amount of information from the computers to capture their interest.

She decided to hide all evidence of the Saran, vanishing most of her gifts into the endless space of her tattoos until she was left with just the gifts of the fourth, eighth and tenth guardians. It wasn't like she had anything else to wear. Hopefully, they would not be too suspicious of her bizarre tattoos.

She didn't have long to wait.

* * *

"What is it that you want?" Agent Coulson asked.

"Some lunch would be nice," Yan replied sarcastically, sticking to safe territory as she was not entirely sure what sort of an answer he expected.

"I was thinking more in the long term," Coulson replied.

"Freedom, I guess," Yan shrugged nonchalantly as if she was asking for a sandwich rather than liberty. She was beginning to think that signalling S.H.I.E.L.D. had not been such a great idea. With the last agent it had been easy to take the conversation wherever she wanted it to go, but Coulson seemed to know exactly the right questions to ask. _He'll just have to put up with not getting the right answers._

"I see. Well, if that is what you want then we can make it happen," things were finally starting to go the way she wanted. "But it's not going to happen immediately. We know too little about you and what happened in the bunker to be able to just let you leave without making a few arrangements,"

 _Or maybe not._

"What's it going to take?" Yan asked, starting to feel impatient.

"Well, first we need to evaluate you, check that you are able to adapt to living in the normal world, and you need to tell us everything you know about the bunker and the Organisation. And of course, you're not yet legally an adult, so we would have to place you with a foster family. To help you adapt, of course,"

 _So that you can keep an eye on me you mean._

"I can assure you that I am definitely capable of looking after myself, one year is not going to make any difference," She said acerbically. "I am certainly not in need of mollycoddling,"

"Be that as it may, it's the way it's going to be. So if a normal life is what you really want, you're going to have to put up with it. Although I can't help but feel that isn't what you're really after,"

Yan realised that once again he had managed to see beneath what she was saying to what she actually wanted. He was right of course. A normal life was beginning to seem decidedly dull to her. She was not a normal person, especially now that she was forever bonded to a quasi-immortal, all powerful, alien parasite. The only thing she was really certain about was that she wanted to be able to choose. And perhaps to be shot at a bit less.

"No, it's not," she admitted, deciding that it wasn't really worth the effort to persuade him otherwise. "Normal people are insufferable idiots and I have no interest in pretending to be one,"

Coulson laughed, "OK, good, you're starting to say what you actually mean. It makes it a lot easier,"

"I'm _so_ glad I'm making this more convenient for you," Yan said sardonically. "Let's make this even easier, why don't you tell me what you think I want and I'll let you know if you get it right,"

"Alright, I think that you have no idea what you want, you're just making it up as you go along. But I also think that you want to know what it's like working for the right side, to do something good for once. Maybe you want to make amends for what you have done, working for them. You would not be the first,"

Yan snorted derisively, "Sorry to disappoint but you're very far off the mark. I have no interest in helping others or doing "something good for once", and I categorically do not have some burning desire to "balance the books". I did what I did to survive and there is no shame in that. Yours may be an opposing side, but in the end it's no different. I'm not here looking for a new employer,"

Coulson was silent for a few moments, regarding her thoughtfully, "You have a very cynical world view. You may not be willing to admit it but that is not really how you feel. You are the one who contacted us, after all,"

"Oh please, it seemed a better option than being picked up by my own side!" Yan retorted, annoyed at his persistent belief in her humanity. " _This_ is the insufferable idiocy that I was talking about. You are all so desperate to believe that I am some perfect moral being as if I was completely unaffected by the last decade of my life!"

Coulson smiled at her in an infuriatingly knowing way, "You put on a good act when you know you're being watched, but I'm not fooled. We've met before you know, in the Denver Art Museum,"

 _Ah! So that's where I know him from._ Yan was careful to give no indication that this was new information to her, perfectly aware that in her distracted state, awed by that painting, she had quite possibly revealed a rare moment of weakness. But it was nothing, he would need more than that if he was going to get through to her.

She merely shrugged and said, "I was on a mission, it was acting all the same,"

"Hmm, if you insist," Coulson conceded. However, she sensed that he was not quite done. "Why don't we focus on what you know, then? There are still a few things I'd like to know about the bunker,"

"Fine," Yan said curtly, secretly glad to be on slightly firmer ground.

"About three months ago we lost contact with an informant on the inside of the bunker, another soldier like you," Coulson began, sparking her interest. "He had been passing us information for some time about what was going on, mission details et cetera. He'd even helped us find some of the other, less important bases belonging to the Organisation, although we were still in the dark about the location of the bunker as he was handing over info during his missions and we had no direct contact when he was inside. They had begun to suspect that something was amiss and we had offered to get him out. But he refused, said he couldn't leave unless he brought on of his fellow soldiers with him and that was the last we heard from him. His name was Jason Strand,"

He paused to let his words sink in and the cold, unpleasant feeling that had been slowly tightening its grip on her chest climaxed into a dawning realisation that this was another trap. He was talking about Storm.

"I was his handler," Coulson continued. "And during our various meetings I heard a lot about this other soldier that he was so reluctant to leave behind. He said that she was probably the only one it wasn't too late to save. And you know? I would say she sounded like a pretty good person at her core."

"Do you actually care what happened to him?" Yan snapped, raging fury flowing through her veins, an uncontrollable blaze that threatened to consume her. For once she let herself feel it, feel the anger and the grief at his death. There was some small part of her that was strangely glad to hear this, to find out that he had not abandoned her as the scientists wanted her to believe. But he was still dead. He had still been cruelly taken from her, the only person she had ever felt anything close to love for. And she knew that in the end it was not S.H.I.E.L.D's fault that he had died, it was the scientists who had killed him and it had been his choice to endanger himself in that way. But in that moment she was sure she hated no one and nothing more than she hated the man sitting in front of her for so calmly using Storm's death to manipulate her.

"Of course I do," Coulson said assertively, but she was unconvinced.

"They killed him," Yan replied bluntly. "They shot him in the head. Congratulations on completely failing to make a difference,"

"I'm truly sorry, he was a good kid," Coulson managed to look both apologetic and frustrated at the same time. "And I regret not being able to save him. But I am trying to make a difference! I'm trying to save you. He thought you were a good person, he died trying to save you and I just don't get why you're so insistent on portraying yourself as an emotionless monster! It can hardly aid your case. And thus I can only conclude that you're trying to protect yourself because the idea that emotions are a weakness has been so deeply engrained in you!"

Yan narrowed her eyes irately, "Storm was my friend and now he is dead. That's the way it is. But in the end he saw something in me that wasn't there, his death was a waste. I don't need saving, I can do it myself."

"Antonia –" he began, mistakenly thinking he could appease her anger by using her name.

" _Do not_ call me that!" she hissed getting to her feet with such force that she slammed her chair into the wall behind her.

The guard, who had barely stirred in the past half hour, leapt up and aimed his gun at her. No longer ruled by sense, she unwisely launched herself in his direction. He fired twice and the electric charge of the stunner hit her squarely in the chest, throwing her off balance and knocking her over. Momentarily winded she lay still and the charge dissipated as the energy was absorbed by the gift of the tenth guardian. The shock was sufficient for her to come to her senses and she made sure that she stayed down. If she had been a normal human the charge would have knocked her unconscious and she had revealed enough for the day.

She gritted her teeth as the guard prodded her side with his boot and resisted the urge to snap his ankle.

Coulson sighed, "This is inconvenient. I was finally getting somewhere. By the time she wakes up she'll have shut down again."

"Sir, she is clearly capable of inflicting a lot of damage," the guard replied, sounding rather put out that his actions were being questioned.

 _Ah, he speaks!_ Yan thought inwardly rolling her eyes.

"Yes, ok, let's move her onto the bench so that she doesn't feel _too_ murderous when she wakes up," Yan forced herself to relax so that her body went floppy when the guard scooped her up and manhandled her onto the bench at the side of the cell. She listened to the retreating footsteps and waited for the slam of the door. Once more she was alone.

 **Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review :D**


	11. Chapter 7

**Hi everyone,**

 **Once again, a close call on being able to post this. It's been a tough week as i'm back at school but still have two more exams :'( not to mention the fact that i can't seem to stay awake for more than a couple of hours. I've just had a two hour nap to get over the exhaustion of being up for an hour and a half... hooray! Anyway, posting a new chapter is always an uplifting experience! As always, thank you for all the follow, favourites and reviews i've got so far, i can't stress enough how much they improve my day! So do let me know what you think and if their are any mistakes, which is quite likely given how tired my brain is right now ;)**

 **Warning for some slight violence at the end.**

 **Enjoy :)**

* * *

Yan lay motionless under the harsh glare of the interrogation lights, trying to process all the new information she had just learnt. She was annoyed with herself for failing to remain calm quite so spectacularly. She had given far too much away and didn't really know why she had got quite so angry. It was foolish. She had meant to handle this carefully so as to minimise the time she had to spend at S.H.I.E.L.D. Instead she had probably just condemned herself to endless psychiatric evaluations, a tiresome foster family and high levels of suspicion at best.

She reluctantly admitted to herself that Agent Coulson had got the better of her. She had thought she was winning but he had run circles around her. At least she still had one more trick up her sleeve. _Or inside a tattoo, to be more accurate._ They didn't yet know about the Saran, and she certainly wasn't going to tell them any time soon. If the worst came to the worst she could easily escape from wherever she was now.

The only thing that was keeping her here now was that she was tired of running. S.H.I.E.L.D. would hunt her to the ends of the earth if they saw the power she had and that definitely seemed worse than cooperating. In fact, working for them was beginning to seem like a plausible option, after all, she would need a reliable income to get along in the world. Despite her earlier statement that S.H.I.E.L.D. was no different to the bunker, she knew that if she had to pick a side it was undoubtedly her preferred choice. Sure she'd still get shot at plenty, but she could be sure the bullets wouldn't come from her own side.

The problem was that she just wasn't sure if S.H.I.E.L.D. was as good a side as Coulson claimed it was. The fact that the scientists viewed it as their worst enemy was no guarantee, they could be worse for all she knew. She had not escaped the bunker just to condemn herself to more servitude.

 _I need more information._ She thought back to the parting words of the twelfth guardian. _Hmm, I guess Ca'lun would know everything there is to know. If the information is there, she'll be able to give it to me. What were the words again? Oh, yes._

 _For every word that fills the silence, open the seventh gate. For Ca'lun the shapeshifter and for silence._

* * *

Yan opened her eyes to find herself back in the silent realm of the seventh guardian, surrounded by the comforting presence of hundreds of thousands of books.

 **Back so soon, Lady Yan?** Ca'lun smiled at her, setting down a giant, leather-bound as she stood up.

 _I need some information,_ she thought, struggling to adjust to the strange method of communication. _And some advice, if you can give it._

 **Ask away! And I shall answer to the best of my ability.**

 _I need everything the Saran knows about S.H.I.E.L.D., I need to know if I should work for them. Can they be trusted?_

 **S.H.I.E.L.D.? Hmm, let's see,** the guardian walked along the bookcase, running her fingers along the spines until she came to a series of slim volumes, pulling a few out to offer to Yan. **We have very little information on Earth, relative to the rest of the library, and most of the souls we have encountered were from your bunker and knew little of the outside world. What they did know was often greatly warped by what the scientists wanted them to think. Of course, I take no opinion on the veracity of any information we gather, but I always include the doubts of others and I imagine that you are looking for a different perspective.**

 _Yes,_ Yan nodded. _I already know everything about S.H.I.E.L.D. that the bunker did, I absorbed that from their computers._

 **Not these then,** Ca'lun carefully replaced the books and then selected a much thicker one, encased in dark green leather with silver lettering, and another, much plainer one. **This is what you want. This one is the memories of a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was undercover in the organisation and was captured, admittedly his views might be biased towards his workplace but they will give you a more reliable picture of it.**

Yan accepted the plain book and turned the first few pages. All of the information it contained at once flowed into her mind and she skimmed through it, dismissing anything that was not directly related to S.H.I.E.L.D. The agent, his name was Ted Blythe, did indeed have a very favourable opinion of his employers, but his most of his reasons for doing so were based in fact. They broke far fewer laws than the Organisation, and they seemed to have quite a lot of leeway from the government to break the ones that they did. They had certainly managed to deal with a lot of dangerous people so their effectiveness was not in question. Most importantly they took care of their agents, protecting them and their families, and they seemed to be more or less free to quit at any time. All in all, it would seem that S.H.I.E.L.D. lived up to most of the supposedly good morals normal people thought so important. She was particularly pleased by the description of a Russian agent who had previously worked for the KGB and had been readily accepted once she had switched sides.

However, Ted Blythe was only level six in security access terms and from what she could tell it went up to at least level ten. There could be plenty worse beneath the surface that Ted did not know about. And besides, this was the way they treated normal humans, not ones with strange, alien powers. She handed the book back to Ca'lun.

 **Was that helpful?**

 _Quite a bit actually, yes. But I still have a few gaps to fill, can I have that other book?_

 **These are the memories of your friend Storm. Though his contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. was minimal, I am sure that you would value his opinions.** Ca'lun handed the other book to her gently, smiling kindly at her.

Yan held it in her hands, filled with trepidation. Of course, she had always been aware at the back of her mind that she would be able to access all his memories, but the idea seemed somehow wrong to her. All these other books contained the memories of dead people from dead worlds who she had never known or even seen before. But Storm was completely different. She was almost afraid to see herself through his eyes.

But she still opened the pages and absorbed his memories. In a way, she was sure that he would have wanted to help her and would have been glad to share them with her. Unlike with the previous memories she lingered for some time on memories entirely unrelated to the information she sought. His memories of their shared missions, running through forests and climbing mountains together, and of those few precious conversations that they had had in stolen time, free to say whatever they wished away from the suspicious gaze of the scientists.

The force of the emotions he had felt for her surprised her, the brotherly affection and a desire to protect her. They were far beyond anything she had ever felt, even for him, and it was unsettling to be feeling them by proxy. She wandered if she could ever feel something so strongly that wasn't anger. But it had been a weakness, if he had not followed his heart so blindly he would have escaped, he would have survived. If Coulson was telling the truth, that is.

Tearing herself away from those tantalising glimpses of how it could have been, she sifted through his memories to find that conversation he had supposedly had with Coulson. To her surprise she found it. It was almost word for word exactly as he had reported it.

 _"_ _I don't have long, they're beginning to suspect I'm not entirely loyal," Storm swept his hair out of his face, self-consciously scanning his surroundings as if sure he was being watched. He carefully evaluated every person in the busy café, looking for a face he recognised or the subtle outline of a concealed weapon._

 _"_ _We can get you out," Coulson said, leaning forward over the table to get his attention. "You've really helped us a lot and I'm sure you'd be welcome to come work for us, you wouldn't be the first, you know,"_

 _Storm smiled, both relieved and delighted that he had achieved what he had been hoping for, "I would like that, but I can't. Not yet,"_

 _"_ _If they're beginning to suspect you, your chances of finding out the coordinates of the bunker are greatly decreased. You can continue to help us when you've joined our side, we can go now," Coulson said persuasively._

 _"_ _I'm sorry, but no," Storm shook his head. "If I leave now, you may never find it and I can't leave Antonia behind,"_

 _"_ _I don't like your chances," Coulson replied, unhappily. "I don't want to see you die,"_

 _"_ _I'll be fine. She's a good kid, the only one of them who actually wants to get away from there. She could have a normal life, probably won't choose to, but she could,"_

 _"_ _They'll be a job for her too, if she wants it,"_

 _"_ _Believe me, she's worth having," Storm laughed, fondly remembering their last sparring session, he still had the bruises._

 _"_ _Alright, if I can't persuade you otherwise, you better be on your way," Coulson stood up and began to walk away. Storm would leave later so that no one outside would see them leaving together._

 _"_ _Wait, Coulson," he said. "If Antonia gets out without me, it'll take a long time for you to get through to her. It probably will whatever happens, but if I'm not there she won't even consider trusting you. Tell her I worked for you, she trusts my judgement, might just make it a little easier,"_

 _Coulson laughed reassuringly, "Don't worry, you can tell her yourself,"_

 _"_ _But just in case I can't," Storm insisted on driving his point home, "Persevere with her. She won't give you an inch at first, she's too used to seeing everyone and everything as a threat,"_

 _"_ _OK, I will," Coulson solemnly agreed._

 _Storm smiled weakly, aware that in all likelihood that this was the last time he would probably ever see the agent. He had slipped up a few too many times for the scientists to not suspect he was up to something and they didn't accept anything but absolute loyalty. He knew he should leave now, that there was no chance of him finding the coordinates in time to save himself, but the guilt of leaving Yan behind would never leave him. He had to atone for all the dreadful things he had done at the behest of the scientists and saving her was the most important thing. Ironically, he was sure that if she was here now she would feel nothing but disdain for what she would term "foolish heroics" and that she wouldn't care if he left her behind, would think it the sensible option. But he still knew he would never be able to forgive himself._

 _So he returned to the bunker._

Not for the first time, Yan found herself desperately wishing that he had been more like her, he would still be alive if he hadn't let his guilt rule him like that. She closed the book and reluctantly handed it back to Ca'lun, promising herself that she would revisit it at some time. She still did not have all the information that she needed, the main thing she had gained was a confirmation of that Coulson was telling the truth.

She decided then that no matter what the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. was like, Coulson was worth trusting. Storm had liked him and he was clearly a man of his word if his persistent attempts to see her as an upstanding citizen bursting with moral promise was anything to go by. So yes, she would probably be content working for him.

 _Is that everything, Lady Ca'lun?_ She asked.

 **I'm afraid so,** the guardian replied, **as I said, the Saran has very little on your planet.**

 _Well, thank you for your help. I certainly know a lot more now._

 **I can only advise that you gather more information, if you are still unsure of your decision. You are surrounded by technology which will gain you access to all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s data. You'll have more to bargain with when you possess all their secrets,** there was an almost mischievous glint to her eyes.

 _Thanks for the advice. That sounds like a good plan,_ Yan grinned.

 **I'll see you soon.**

* * *

And all at once she was back in the real world, still lying on the incredible uncomfortable bench. Her arm was pinned beneath her and had gone to sleep, but despite her awkward position she stayed still so as to betray no sign that she was fully conscious. She was sure that Coulson would come straight back in as soon as soon as he knew she was awake and she wasn't ready for the discussion yet.

Ideally, she would access the information without them noticing her move, let alone that she had powers. She was pretty certain that even if she decided to work for them, she wouldn't be telling them about the Saran any time soon. She was surprised that they had not asked her about her tattoos yet – they were hardly subtle – but she would come up with some excuse as soon as they did. She was already wearing her gift from the tenth guardian, which was a start. The problem was that the only wires that she could access from within her cell were those bringing power to the cameras and they were unlikely to have anything much stored on them.

Yan was then struck by an idea that was either inspirational or highly reckless and doomed to end in disaster. She surreptitiously wiggled her fingers until they were in contact with the wall and tapped into the energy feed to the cameras. Ignoring the bizarre sense of disconnectedness that came from seeing her prone form through the cameras, she altered the footage so that it played on a loop.

She then leapt to her feet, relieved to be able to stretch out her limbs and return the feeling to her arm. The handcuffs she was wearing were restricting her movements and she was unsure as to how she could get them off without them noticing later. In the end she made the Saran grow a tendril from the edge of her sleeve to pick the lock and left them on the table. She'd be able to snap them back on when she returned.

Then came the door. They had made life easy for her by locking her in a cell with an electronic door and it was the work of a moment to crack the code and open it. Before she slipped out, she summoned the gift of the fifth guardians and pulled up the hood, vanishing into the shadows. Luckily, the corridor was deserted anyway. She closed the door behind her and set off, running her hand along one wall to access cameras and check that the way ahead was clear. Even though she was invisible, the corridors were narrow and there was a danger that someone would walk into her.

Yan came to a control panel and hacked into it to locate the main data banks. It provided her with some limited information about the base she was in, including floor plans and data about the surrounding area. The base was small and fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, mostly used as a stop off point after important missions before prisoners and the like were transferred to main hubs. This seemed sensible to her, that way if someone escaped they wouldn't have access to a lot. _Someone like me._

Luckily for her, it was still connected to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main frame and thus she would be able to access everything. The only problem was that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hierarchal security system meant that most computers didn't have access to the higher echelons of data. The few that did were in areas both full of people and cameras and incredibly open.

It had taken her a full five minutes to wrangle this information from the control panel and she was acutely aware that if she was to hack into and absorb all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mainframe, it was going to take a lot longer. She could not just absorb everything. For a start, she would cause a black out at the base before she got the information she wanted. If she broke in too forcibly S.H.I.E.L.D. would pick it up and start to fight back, probably cutting off her access. She had to get in, peruse all the data, make copies of anything pertinent and get out again all without raising any alarms. It was going to be difficult and take a long time.

Fortunately, further consultation of the floor plans revealed a possible option: an out of the way room that held data banks.

She made her way there swiftly, flying along the corridors for added speed with the aid of the gift of the third guardian. Upon arriving she found that the entrance to the room was guarded, which provided her with a slight obstacle. After a few minutes of furious planning, she headed further down the corridor and flew up to dislodge the covering of a vent. It fell to the floor with a satisfactory crash and was enough to draw the guard away from his post long enough for her to open the door and slip in unnoticed, closing it again behind her.

Yan set the cameras on a loop and pulled back her hood, becoming visible again. She vanished her cloak and, backing up against the nearest block of computers so that she was facing the door and could at least be aware of anyone entering, pressed her hands against them. Settling herself into position, she let her conscious flow into the system, leaving her still aware of her surroundings but disconnected to such an extent that she was no longer able to control her body.

Her first move was to check that the cameras in her cell were still playing a loop and no one had realised she wasn't actually there anymore. Satisfied that her ruse was holding up, she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. It didn't take long for her to break through the first few levels of security, pausing carefully after each one in order to check that her presence had gone unnoticed. The information this revealed did little to negate what she had found out so far and so she pressed on.

At about the sixth level of security she began to run into problems. There were several algorithms that were constantly mutating the complex structures that formed the security settings such that as soon as she came close to breaking through the level she would be shunted back to square one. Growing impatient and starting to worry that Coulson might return to her cell, she diverted part of her conscious to looking through the camera lenses.

She finally found Coulson looking at a computer screen that displayed the camera feed to her cell, and another that was replaying the footage from their earlier interview. He was with two other agents, a scientist whom she instantly disliked by association and a red head whom she immediately recognised as the defected Russian agent from Agent Blythe's memories, Natasha Romanov. She was lounging on a desk in a nonchalant manner showing vague interest in the heated discussion going on between Coulson and the scientist. But the slight tension in her frame betrayed her readiness to pounce like a sprung coil at any moment, a tension Yan recognised in herself.

The scientist seemed to be engaged in an in depth psychiatric evaluation of her, "She's a sociopath! I mean, you get the feeling she knows what emotions look like and not what they are,"

Coulson was not so convinced, "No, I don't think so, they may be well buried but they're definitely there,"

"Come on, she shows all the classic signs! She's entirely lacking in remorse and she seems incapable of feeling most emotions beyond a shallow understanding. It doesn't take long to see that she clearly doesn't care what other people think of her,"

"On that point I definitely disagree," Coulson argued. "She went to some lengths to try and convince me that she wasn't what I said she was, in fact she practically wanted me to think that she is a sociopath,"

"Probably because she thinks it's a good thing," the scientist muttered crossly. Coulson ignored him.

"What do you think, Agent Romanov? Good material for S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"She's good, I'll give her that," Romanov replied, a lyrical amusement to her tone. "She ran circles around Peters. But there's no way of saying how much loyalty she has left to her organisation, it's too hard to tell when she's lying, just watching through a screen,"

"You think she's lying?"

"About some of it, definitely. She gives off the impression she's right where she wants to be, like this is all part of some elaborate plan. But I'd say there's enough there for her to be S.H.I.E.L.D. material. She's had the same sort of training I did and we've caught her young so we've got time for her to adapt to our way of doing things. I'll certainly say I wouldn't want to be on opposite sides though. Did you see the way she moved when you came in?"

"She didn't really move at all,"

"That's the skill of it, look," Romanov rewound the footage to the point where Coulson had burst in, "here, see it? She shifts and look at the way she flexes her wrists. Clearly she was preparing to attack Agent Hucks to disarm him and then stopped when she realised it was just a stunner. She was ready to snap her wrist to get the handcuffs off. And she disguised the movement so that you wouldn't suspect anything. It's impressive. Also, I'd say she'd much prefer it to becoming an ordinary citizen"

She did indeed sound fairly impressed and Yan was equally impressed that she had noticed it from behind a screen. She marked her down as someone to watch, Romanov would be a powerful opponent if it came to it, even without the advantage of powers.

"OK, well, I'd gathered as much from our conversation," Coulson said.

"One thing I am curious about is her tattoos," Romanov continued. "They seem fairly extensive and not at all in keeping with the sort of things soldiers were normally allowed in the bunker. At first I assumed that she had got them before she was taken, but she was far too young. And there's no mention of them in her medical files from the bunker,"

"Strange," Coulson agreed. "I'll have to ask her about them later, maybe she'll even tell me,"

"I think it's going to be a very long time before we can trust her, if ever, she's clearly been brainwashed. We can't employ every enemy agent that comes our way," The scientist objected. Yan was pleased to notice Romanov rolling her eyes at the pointed reference to her.

"Well, she's definitely the one who sent the signal from the base, so I would say she's already considered the possibility of working for us," Coulson pointed out, much to the chagrin of the scientist.

Yan returned her focus to the computer system as she finally managed to batter her way into the seventh level of security. Much to her dissatisfaction, it soon became apparent that this level was even more complex and difficult to break than the last one. There were several layers of security to break through to even access the information on that level, as several files were only accessible on a need to know basis.

Still she had found nothing that she particularly objected to and the few records she had found of Storm certainly pointed towards S.H.I.E.L.D.'s efforts to extract him from the situation, further backing Coulson's portrayal of events. She had, however, viewed several cases that proved to her that working for S.H.I.E.L.D. was the best choice for her. They seemed to have a policy of assimilate, neutralise or eliminate when it came to threats and she knew which she preferred.

She was intrigued to discover that she was by no means the first person with abilities S.H.I.E.L.D. had come across, though she was far more powerful than any of the others. She was most interested by a certain Steven Rogers, or Captain America as they had chauvinistically labelled him. An American soldier in the 1940's who had taken some sort of serum and become a super soldier only to be frozen in ice and discovered seventy years later. Coulson had been in charge of his recovery from the Arctic and seemed to be something of a fan, from as much as she could determine from his extremely excitable report.

Suddenly alarms began to blare throughout the base, the noise of which sent Yan's mind into overdrive as ripples of panic spread throughout the computer system and it began to shut down. Her rapidly narrowing window of opportunity was enough for her to abandon all attempts at caution and to attack the levels with all her might. Her consciousness was so far integrated into the system that she could not tell the difference between her own emotions and the reactions of the security level to the invasive virus that she was.

Each attempt of the security system to fight back against her sent a spike of pain ripping through her, as if her very self was under physical attack, further shredding her already shattering mind. Some small part of her was aware that she was completely, dangerously out of control and that, if she didn't stop soon, S.H.I.E.L.D. would find her and there would be no way of hiding her powers or protecting herself. But her crazed, battered consciousness had so narrowed its focus to one single goal to take over the entire system that she could do nothing but press on, smashing through layer after layer of security.

She calmly surveyed the base through every available camera simultaneously, watching cohorts of agents rushing down corridors, some urgently searching for the source of the attack and some searching for her. They had not yet put two and two together and realised that they were all searching for the same thing. The alarms had been set off by her presence in the system being discovered and it was not long before a passing guard had checked her cell to find it empty.

Coulson was still discussing the interview footage with the quarrelsome scientist and Romanov when an agent rushed in breathlessly to inform him of her absence. At the same time, warning messages of the attack flashed up on the screens. She coldly observed the smugness of the scientist that his opinions had been vindicated and the crease in Coulson's forehead that betrayed his confusion and disappointment. They all ran out again and hurried down corridors to the cell block. Yan watched their progress with mild interest.

Another rush of pain snapped her focus out of the cameras and into the rapidly heating room of data banks, whose gentle humming had become increasingly louder and distressed as the machines struggled to cope with the onslaught of her power. A dizzying array of blinking lights were flashing and sparking, creating shifting after images that danced across her eyelids in the gloom of the tiny room. Despite the heat, she was racked by waves of violent shivering.

As the pain rose to a deafening crescendo at the base of her skull, she realised that there were crimson rivulets of blood running down her bare arms and creating sticky traces down the side of the databank. Three spikes of vicious black metal had erupted from each arm, ripping apart her skin. The unnatural protrusions from her bones were crackling with blue sparks of electricity that rippled and leapt between them. As she had slowly lost control over the gift of the tenth guardian, the Saran had taken control of the situation, providing an outlet for the tremendous power coursing through her body.

The pain was making it hard for her to think. Her head burned with pain as it was flooded with a storm of information and curse words from languages she didn't even recognise. The Saran was swirling around her, constantly shifting and morphing as it flowed wildly over her form. It seemed to convulse like some dying in creature in agony. It was rent apart and then would smash back together in great surges as it undulated violently. It was screaming.

No, the noise was her. She was screaming. The air was forced out her lungs into a monstrous, bestial shriek that spoke to her of a thousand war cries, a thousand laments, a thousand death throes. She didn't even know what she was looking at anymore as kilobytes of information rushed through her.

Alerted no doubt by the desperate cries of pain that were flying from her lips, the guard, whom she had deceived earlier with such ease, burst into the room. He had his gun tightly clenched in his hands and aimed at her. Yan saw his pupils dilating in shock, the tensing of his muscles, the look of abject horror on his face. She heard the sharp intake of breath, the soft click of the trigger being pulled back, the crack as the gun recoiled and the bullet tore out of the barrel and sped towards her.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Terrified gasps. The pounding of feet. The thud of his heartbeat. The clatter as the gun drops to the floor. Static crackling over his coms.

No response.

* * *

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	12. Chapter 8

**Hi everyone!**

 **I'm sorry this is a day late, I literally barely got up yesterday and time ran away with me! The next chapter may be in early or possibly a couple of days late depending on whether i get my life together or not! Anyway, thank you so much for all the follows, favourites and reviews! Each email i receive telling me about a new follower etc literally brightens my day! As always, please let me know what you think and alert me to any mistakes i might have made :)**

 **Warnings for mild violence and swearing.**

 **Enjoy :D**

* * *

With some difficulty, Yan peeled her hands off the twisted, melted surface of the data banks, ignoring the protest of her stiff wrists. She licked her lips experimentally and drooped forward, swinging her body back up. Her throat was hoarse and there was a hollow echo in her ears. She coughed and spat out six bullets into her cupped palms. They were bloodstained and warm to the touch. She could feel the spikes receding and the Saran settling back into place.

Her chest ached and her breaths were laboured. The cool numbing of the healing powers of the gift of the ninth guardian, which she had unconsciously summoned, was gently spreading across her torso, closing up the six ragged holes. Sound was beginning to return to her as her shattered eardrums repaired themselves and her vision was beginning to clear.

She straightened up to survey the wreckage of burnt, crushed machinery that lay around her. She turned her gaze to the doorway to find she was staring into the barrels of several guns. She inwardly rolled her eyes. _They sure don't learn quickly._

The guard from earlier was still backed into a corner looking slightly traumatised. Several more agents had entered the room to make way for Coulson, who she had realised was probably the most senior official on the base. He was only one who didn't have a weapon trained on her. He was regarding her with wary interest, just as one might watch a wild beast whose claws are half hidden.

Yan was perfectly aware that she had, to use a phrase she had heard once, "fucked up royally". It certainly fit the situation. Her plan hadn't so much gone off the rails as plunging screaming of a mountainside into a bottomless crevasse. But she was never one to give up in such a situation and she felt reasonably capable of improvising until she had things back under control.

She summoned the rest of the guardians' gifts, delighting in the feeling of security it gave her. But took of the mask and hooked it onto her belt, deciding that she had need of her facial expressions. The sudden materialisation of black matter swirling around her did not do much in the way of reducing the tension in the room and the bristling hostility of the agents. However, she was not perturbed and took a displeasingly shaky step forward towards the doorway.

The movement, small as it had been, elicited a sudden rattle of raised guns as the agents tried to reassert their position in the game of who-strikes-first that they had unwittingly entered.

"Please, that is hardly necessary," Yan drawled with an unimpressed smirk, finally breaking the tense silence. She took extra care to draw out her vowels to illustrate her disdain at their actions. She raised a hand and loosened her fingers slightly, allowing the bullets to slip through, one by one, and fall to the ground with a gentle clink, like sand through an hourglass.

In the stunned silence that followed her perhaps overly dramatic move, the barrels began to lower as confused dismay settled in.

She drifted towards the door, allowing her feet to lift up off the floor. It was an extravagant show of her power, but she had decided that her best move was to make it very clear that she had nothing to hide. It also had the added bonus of making up some of the height difference. The agents hurriedly shifted out her way like the parting of the red sea.

"Coulson," she acknowledged his presence.

"Antonia," he responded, a bemused glint in his eyes. To her surprise, his use of her name did not irritate her as much as she expected it to.

"I prefer Yan, actually," she corrected him all the same. Now that she was out in the corridor, she could see that almost half the base had turned up and realised that there had been a slight time lapse. _I must have blacked out for a bit there._

Romanov was there, hanging back slightly from the rest, surveying the carnage with amusement. Yan flashed a toothy grin at her. If she was surprised, she did not show it. The scientist was there too and was examining her like she was some sort of experiment gone wrong. It was displeasing to say the least.

"I think I shall return to my cell," she mused. "I assume you wish to continue our discussion?"

"I'm glad you're finally interested in talking," Coulson replied. "I imagine we will have a lot more to talk about,"

"No doubt,"

"Agent Romanov, if you wouldn't mind?" he gestured for the red head to accompany Yan back to her cell. "I have a computer system to repair first,"

"Yes, sorry about that, it was _mostly_ unintentional," Yan grinned devilishly and glided towards Romanov. When she passed the scientist she paused momentarily to give him an exacting stare before turning back towards Coulson, "Of course, there isn't much value to any apology of mine. I do, after all, "show all the classics signs" of being a sociopath,"

The scientist visibly blanched at this and did his best impression of a man waiting for the proverbial hole in the ground to swallow him up. With one last snide glance in his general direction, she swept on down the corridor, satisfied that she had meted out her small revenge. If she had learnt anything from the bunker, it was that a small amount of fear was the best part of authority.

Once they had returned to her cell, Natasha hurried back off to the hub of the base where pretty much everyone important had gathered to discuss the latest revelation in the saga that the whole situation was turning out to be. Yan followed her progress disinterestedly through the cameras, switching her consciousness from one to the other with as much ease as if she were simply moving her gaze.

She lounged on the hard bench that was supposed to act as a bed, one arm hanging lazily off the side and swinging to and fro. She had balanced her mask back on her face and half morphed her cloak so that she had a thick layer of wolf fur to lie on. The luxury was not necessary but it added to the impression of languorous indifference about the whole affair. She knew they would be watching her, even if they weren't certain that what they were seeing was the real picture.

They had posted a couple of guards outside her door, presumably for appearance's sake as they could no more prevent her from leaving than they could stop a heavily laden, runaway tanker from rolling down a hill. Still, she was beginning to enjoy herself; there was nothing like a game well played.

After a while she became bored and returned her focus to the meeting. They had called the director, a one-eyed man named Fury, to inform him of her presence and the events at the base. From the little information she had gleaned about him from the system – being the director pretty much everything about him was unknown to those below the top few levels, ones she had not managed to crack – the name certainly fitted the man.

"Are you telling me that this kid was wandering around the base for upwards of half of hour, before anyone even realised she was missing? Let alone stealing our every secret!" the director snapped, his very tone suggesting that at this point a reply was neither necessary nor welcome. Some idiotic tech person lacked a sufficient understanding of social situations to pick up on this and unwisely began to babble on about how the security systems had not completely failed. He was silenced with a glare.

"Sir, it's quite clear that we would have had little chance of restraining her, had we noticed her escape any earlier," Coulson explained. "Her power levels are way off the scale of anything we've experienced previously,"

"Give me a point of reference, Coulson. What sort of fire power are we going to need here?"

"From the little I've seen of her power so far, she definitely qualifies as enhanced. She was shot six times and barely flinched!" Coulson grinned, sounding fairly excited. "I'd say she could give our Norse friend a run for his money. Dr Yasin, if you would?"

 _Norse friend? What on earth does he mean by that?_

"So far we've identified about five completely separate abilities, some of which seem to break several basic rules of physics. Shapeshifting, levitation, energy manipulation, accelerated healing and possibly some form of camouflaging. Of course we barely have any data and there's no way of knowing for now what the upper limits of these powers are. Ideally I'd like to run a few tests to see what we can find, but it could be difficult without some level of cooperation," Dr Yasin gave her report in a business-like manner, her tone betraying nothing of her opinion on the matter beyond mild, professional curiosity. She was a short, Asian woman with thick, black hair tied back in a smart ponytail, and for the time being at least Yan did not instinctively dislike her despite her scientist status.

"Any ideas on neutralising her powers?" Fury asked.

 _One step up from elimination I guess,_ she thought with some irritation, wary that they might attempt to deprive her of the Saran, something which would in fact result in killing her instead.

"I've analysed a blood sample I managed to collect after the incident. It's not conclusive, but it would seem that she has bonded with some sort of symbiotic life form and that this is granting her powers possibly in return for a share of the energy she absorbs. It could be parasitic but I'd need more tests to confirm. However, what I'm fairly certain of is that it would be impossible to separate this symbiote from her. It's permanently bonded to every cell in that blood sample and I'd hazard a guess that that's the case for every single one of her cells. If we tried we could kill her, so I'm unwilling to try without more tests. Beyond that we could attempt to engineer some sort of suppressor, but again I'd need much more data before I could even draw up any plans. There are some very detailed medical records from the bunker and none show any sign of the symbiote or her powers so I'd say this is an incredibly recent occurrence,"

Yan was incredibly beginning to warm to Dr Yasin as she seemed to possess both enough sense to not anger her and enough moral values to be unwilling to treat her like a lab rat. It seemed that there were acceptable scientists in the world.

"Personally, sir, I think that trying to neutralise her powers is not our best option here," Coulson added, yet again showing himself to be a worthy ally. "The medical reports that Dr Yasin mentioned are only in our possession because Yan sent them to us and now that we know she has powers, I'd even go as far as to guess that she caused the explosion at the bunker."

"She could be a useful asset," Fury conceded. "However, it could be a fatal move to go down that avenue if she turns out to be a puppet. Her actions so far have been aggressive to say the least,"

"I don't think so. I think she was gathering intel for herself, to find a version of S.H.I.E.L.D. different from the one she's been force-fed all these years, and never meant to be found. I'd say she liked what she saw, seeing as she's still here." Coulson argued. "She's definitely interested, we just have to convince her to work for us, and that's going to be hard if we're trying to neutralise her at the same time. It's worth pointing out that in all probability she is listening in to this conversation, she's proven herself to be perfectly capable of hacking our surveillance system."

Fury face somehow managed to take on a more thunderous look than before, "Agent Romanov, you have an opinion on this?"

The Russian nodded, "I'm with Coulson on this one, Fury. The kid's got potential, her case is not all that different from mine."

"Alright, we're going with this route then. Romanov, you'll be working this case too, since you possess so much experience in the field. I expect frequent updates," and with that he signed off. The agents dispersed, returning to their tasks around the base, leaving Coulson, Romanov and Dr Yasin.

"Dr Yasin, I'll alert you when Yan is ready for more tests, let me know if you find anything else in the meantime,"

"Ideally, I'd like to do a medical exam first to ensure this lifeform isn't doing her any harm," the scientist nodded and, when Coulson agreed, hurried off back to her lab.

"So, what's the plan?"

"You should interview her first, I think she likes you," Coulson decided.

Romanov laughed, "I doubt she has any positive opinions on anybody at this point, but I'll see what I can do,"

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review :)**


	13. Chapter 9

**Hi everyone!**

 **I'm so sorry this is late! I've had a crazy week and I was away from my computer all weekend! Good news is that I'm on summer holiday now so I should be able to get my act together and get chapters out in time (fingers crossed).**

 **Anyway, as usual, let me know what you think and alert me to any mistakes I might have made. Thank you so much for all the follows, favourites and reviews so far!**

 **Enjoy :)**

* * *

Yan examined the objects on the table in front of her with some confusion. She had withdrawn from the cameras after catching the end of that conversation to wait for Romanov's arrival. Yet, when she had finally turned up, she had brought several books, some chocolate and a grenade.

She was pleased enough by the chocolate not to care what its purpose was, and she assumed that the grenade and the books were some sort of test, but beyond that she hadn't a clue what the red-head was trying to achieve. She was sat on the other side of the table, with her legs folded in a relaxed manner and observing her shrewdly.

Aware that the secrets of the Saran would no doubt be laid bare under the perceptive gaze of the Russian much more swiftly than she planned, she had banished all but the essentials in clothing terms. Surprisingly she had not remarked on it yet.

Deciding to take the objects at face value, she first double checked that the grenade was not about to explode, though she suspected that it was likely a dud, and then began to eat the chocolate whilst perusing the books. To her mild disappointment they turned out to all be ones she had read that day in the library although she was fairly impressed that they had got all the details right.

"What, no Turner painting?" she commented, raising an eyebrow.

"Ah, my ploy has been discovered," the agent smiled at her.

"Do tell, what have you gleaned from you in depth psychological analysis?" she said sarcastically. "Let me guess, I'm hungry and know how to read?"

"Quite a lot actually," she replied. "Your primary focus was on identifying and dealing with any threats, you went to the food after and the books last as they neither pose a threat nor are of any particular use to you. You view them as a source of information more than as entertainment; you were uninterested once you realised you had already read them. Most interestingly, you spent quite some time trying to determine my motives,"

Yan was impressed with her perception, "Not bad, Agent Romanov. However, I must find fault with one thing, as I doubt anyone with good sense would ignore a grenade on the table!"

The Russian laughed, a pleasingly clear sound that was both light hearted and perfectly sincere, "Please, call me Natasha,"

"I will take you up on that, though I suspect that is merely another move at inducing my goodwill," She grinned, "likewise, call me Yan,"

"Well then, Yan, you should know that our previous offer is still open. Our scientists could find out a way to separate you from the source of your powers, you could live a fairly normal life,"

Yan snorted derisively, "Well, _Natasha,_ you and I both know that I neither want a "normal life" fairly or otherwise, nor is it possible. We may be pretending that I didn't hear every word you all said earlier, but I can confirm that it is most definitely impossible to separate it from me,"

She paused for a moment to let her disdain fully show and then added in a mocking tone "In fact, the only way of doing so would be to kill me. Of course, if that's your plan, you may encounter some difficulties along the lines of being crushed by the weight of this very building," She flashed her a cynical smile.

"Let us dispense with the games then," Natasha said, seemingly completely unfazed by her violent outburst. She leant forward and casually swept the objects to one side. "Although you claim to be uninterested, it seems that there is a job opening available. So, why don't you tell me what you found out about S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"Everything I needed to know, more or less,"

"A little vague, don't you think?"

"The eighth level of security, and since we're putting all our cards on the table, I am indeed capable of doing that in reverse. All information I gather is permanently stored within my mind and can be transferred to another device should I wish to do so,"

"Is that a threat?" she sounded amused, as if she doubted the veracity of her statements. _Or, more accurately, as if she wishes me to believe she does._

"Not at all," Yan smiled expansively, "It is merely that I am aware that you're all desperate to know just what I can do and I am willing to supply that information, as long as it's on my terms. So go ahead and ask,"

"We welcome your cooperation, of course,"

"I'm glad to hear it."

"The source of your powers, what is it?" she cut straight to the chase, no longer dancing around the subject.

"It's called the Saran. Put simply, it's an ancient, alien, bio-tech symbiote with a conscious," she grinned. "It has more morals than me,"

"Where did it come from?"

"According to it, from a planet several million lightyears away. Before you ask, there's no chance of any followers; its entire solar system was destroyed when its dying sun exploded. It's the only living thing that made it out. It's been travelling around the universe for ten millennia and spent the last twenty of those in the bunker, swallowing whatever poor unfortunate they threw at it, "

"Swallowing?" the agent queried, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

"As I said earlier, it's a symbiote. It can survive on its own, but it can't get far, thus it bonds with hosts like yours truly. The bunker figured this out after a while and kept it well supplied, or tried to anyway,"

"So how is this the first we've heard of it then? I can't imagine they would have kept such an asset under wraps for so long,"

"They were unsuccessful, the Saran rejected every one. And, since the process unfortunately required the candidates to be on the verge of death beforehand, it became their preferred execution method,"

Natasha nodded tersely, crossing her arms, "Why?"

Yan shrugged expressively, "Who knows. The Saran is picky about its hosts, but I haven't yet figured out what the point of that part is,"

"And you? If you are no different from the rest of the bunker's soldiers, as you'd have us believe, why did it choose you?"

"Please, I'd like you to think I'm more intelligent than my peers at least," she smirked.

"Answer the question,"

"Fine, as you wish," she huffed. "The Saran possesses artificial intelligence. It houses in its infinite databanks the memories of every single organism it has encountered, including every inhabitant of Saranheim, its home planet. Should it come into contact with someone in full health or completely dead, it merely rolls over them. But, when that someone is somewhere in between, just recently shot in the head for example, it bonds with them and absorbs all their memories and knowledge for its archives. And thus began the herculean tasks, of which all must be completed if the Saran was to accept me as host,"

"And if you hadn't been accepted as host?"

"I'd be dead," a blunt reply.

"But these tasks all took place in your mind?"

"Doesn't make it any less real," she argued. "Besides, I had just been shot in the head,"

"So it does its very best to kill you, yet you claim it has a conscious,"

"Actually, I'd go so far as to call it sanctimonious. It has a misplaced belief in the virtue of heroics on behalf of the masses, the reason, I suspect, behind the decidedly short lives of its previous hosts. It has a grand goal of preventing death in all its myriad forms. A somewhat unachievable goal I can't claim to share. However, it has assured me that the powers it has imbued me with are mine to do with what I will,"

"In return for what exactly?"

"Knowledge is all it craves!" Yan exclaimed spreading her arms wide mock dramatically. "It watches through my eyes and learns. It hoards information indiscriminately, as far as it is concerned anything might be of use. And the best part is that all this information is available to me, ten millennia of intergalactic wisdom at my fingertips. A pretty good deal really. Incidentally, it thus knows all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets too, but I shouldn't worry; it's about as willing to share information as a dragon is to share its gold, metaphorically speaking,"

"Your tattoos, they're something to do with it? You don't have them in the pictures in your medical files,"

"Yes, consider it a marker of being its host if you will," Yan was really beginning to wish she had destroyed all the files on her when she'd had the chance.

"How long have you been bonded to it?"

"Depends,"

"On what?"

"The time. It's been less than a day,"

"And you are sure you can control it,"

"I can," Yan replied laconically, aware that she had not really proved herself in that department. The raised eyebrow that this response received was testament to that.

"How can you be sure? As you just said, you've only had it a day,"

"Believe me, an ability to control the Saran was one of its tests. It was quite insistent on that matter. I suppose that its desire to defend the innocent would prevent it from choosing an out of control, possibly homicidal _sociopath_ as a host," she said. "Like any power there is a risk of losing control but I could just as easily lose control of a car and they let any idiot drive those,"

"I suspect that the effect would be somewhat greater with the Saran," Natasha contended, but her tone clearly betrayed her amusement.

"Well, I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D. would be happy to train me to ensure there is no danger of that happening,"

"We would indeed. Our scientists could help you discover the full limits of your powers as well,"

"Ah, I'm afraid you won't convince me to be a lab rat that easily, Natasha, I've seen enough scientists in my time to know I prefer to keep my distance,"

The agent raised her hands in a placatory fashion, "On you own terms, of course. But it would go a long way towards earning our goodwill,"

"Be that as it may, do not expect me to reveal everything about my abilities straight away. Goodwill is one thing, but trust is another entirely,"

"So you are not going to tell us anymore of what your powers entail?"

"Suffice to say you have seen quite enough of them already,"

"But not all,"

"No, not all,"

They lapsed into silence for a while, Natasha seemed to be contemplating her next move. Yan took advantage of the lull in proceedings, and the fact that her hands were hidden in her lap, to summon the gift of the tenth guardian and conduct a quick sweep of the base to check up on the activities of the other agents, tapping into the cameras through the wires that curled up the leg of the table. Finding nothing much of interest – the scientists were getting exactly nowhere, Coulson was watching their interview from the control room – she returned her focus to the cell.

"You were in the surveillance system again, weren't you?" the Russian remarked, startling Yan, who thought she had betrayed no sign of doing so.

"I was," she admitted. "How did you know?"

"Your eyes lose focus,"

"I was unaware, I shall endeavour to hide that in future," she said and then laughed, "It seems my S.H.I.E.L.D. training has begun already,"

"Well, on that subject, you will need a supervising officer,"

"Really?" Yan sighed, aware that she had perhaps walked herself into that one.

"Of course, you cannot expect us to leave you unsupervised,"

"What, you're going to watch me sleep?"

"Do you even need to?"

Yan paused a bit at that question, considering it for herself. She had always got by on very few hours of sleep and had often gone more than twenty four hours without it. The scientists had never allowed them much anyway, so she had learnt to decrease her need to the absolute minimum so that she could always be ready. Now, with her ability to replenish her strengths with pure energy, she wondered if she would have to at all.

"It's a possibility,"

"Looks like it's going to be a tiring job for me, then," Natasha laughed.

"You? Aren't you a little high in the system to be assigned babysitting duties?"

"This is hardly an ordinary case. S.H.I.E.L.D. can't just entrust it to anyone,"

"And Fury wants you to keep an eye on me,"

She hid her surprise admirably, "Listening in again I take it,"

"Just as Coulson said. I'm afraid I find my curiosity hard to reign in some times. Quite an angry man, isn't he, Fury? The name fits rather well,"

"He has high expectations," she replied, rather loyally in Yan's opinion.

"And high doubts it seems,"

"He's realistic. Most people like you who come our way are more trouble than they're worth. But I shouldn't worry, he knows an asset when he sees one,"

"Like you? Ex-KGB I hear,"

"Actually, his initial plan was to kill me, so you see how these things turn out,"

"Indeed," Yan smiled and decided that the agent had earned enough of her "goodwill" as she so often referred to it, for her to reveal some more of her powers. She was by no means planning to give them every detail about what she could do, just so that they could go and develop some way of neutralising them. But it seemed a reasonable concession.

So she summoned the gifts of the first guardian, choosing them mostly by their virtue of being first, but also because they were the least exotic of her abilities. The guns appeared with their holsters at her hip and, because they were obscured by the table, Natasha didn't notice until she pulled them out and made to put them down in full view.

In hindsight she perhaps should have expected her reaction.

With almost unhuman speed, the Russian had drawn her own gun from some masterfully concealed spot and aimed it at her head. Gone was the amicable expression, now replaced by a look of fierce intensity that quite clearly signalled that she was not to be messed with.

Yan carefully and slowly lowered the guns to the table top and retracted her hands, bringing them up to head height, both to signify her surrender and to allow her to shield her face if Natasha did fire. She was as yet in the dark as to whether she could survive another shot to the head and she wasn't willing to find out any time soon.

"Hold up there, I wasn't making a threatening move," she protested and then added upon seeing the sceptical look on the agents' face, "I mean, I didn't intend to make a threatening move. I was actually going for a compromise on the whole revealing my powers thing. Don't shoot me,"

The Russian seemed to consider for a moment but she eventually lowered the barrel so that it wasn't pointing anywhere painful. She made no move to put away the gun completely though, or even switch back on the safety, so she did not consider herself out of the woods.

"Where did they come from?" she asked sharply, clearly not as amused as Yan was pretending to be.

"One of my abilities is that I can summon weapons as and when I need them," She started to explain, now feeling that it had been a ridiculously stupid idea, the more she tried to sound appeasing, the more threatening she actually appeared. _Well, I know where my strengths lie._

"There are two and they change into whatever weapon is most useful. Guns, daggers, swords, a bow and arrow even, though I doubt I'd ever have much use for that," she earned a slightly amused look for that, though she couldn't figure out what for.

"And ammunition?"

"Self-replenishing, as far as I know,"

"What model are they?" Natasha finally put her gun down in favour of picking up one of Yan's, twisting it this way and that to examine it.

"I don't think it is a specific model"

"Good weight," the agent mused aiming it at a wall to gauge its feel. "Hmm, lighter than a Glock. And no magazine,"

"As I said, it doesn't need bullets,"

"Handy, think you could find a few more of those?" The full smile had finally returned. Yan could see now that she was a very tightly coiled spring underneath and wasn't fooled.

"They only work for me, I'm afraid," she laughed. "One more thing, perhaps the most important, with these weapons in my hands I will never miss,"

This at last seemed to be a shocking detail to the agent, "At how far a range?"

"I haven't fully tested it yet, but in theory as far as I can see the target clearly,"

"Incredible," the agent murmured thoughtfully, turning the gun over in her hands again as if double checking it was real. Eventually she reluctantly handed it back to Yan, who banished it again.

"And that is another of your abilities?"

"What?"

"That you can summon things out of nowhere,"

"Not quite, only the gifts of the Saran which bestow my powers,"

"Gifts?"

"My powers are not inherent in themselves, my perfect aim comes from the guns, my control of energy sources from these, and so on" She held up her hands to show off the fingerless gloves. "They are part of the Saran and they can't be separated from me without my consent,"

The last bit was partially fabricated, she had no idea if that was possible, but she certainly didn't want S.H.I.E.L.D. trying it. Natasha had turned out to be an even better agent that she had previously suspected, and had managed to tease information from her as easily as if she were a natural gossip. She would be annoyed if she wasn't so impressed.

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	14. Chapter 10

**Hi everyone!**

 **Actually on time this week! Please do let me know what you think and alert me to any mistakes I might have made, I haven't read over this chapter as many times as some others so it's quite possible there will be a few. Apologies for some dodgy science in this chapter, it's been a while since I did any at school and obviously not at a level equal to a S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist ;)**

 **Warnings for violence and some swearing. Also, if you think that there are warnings missing for this or any other chapter please tell me so I can put them in!**

 **Enjoy :)**

* * *

It had been some weeks since that first rather disastrous day in the S.H.I.E.L.D. base. Yan had finished her interview with Natasha without revealing much more of her life beyond a love of chocolate. After that she had had a pleasant conversation with Coulson, who had earned her favour by bringing her some proper lunch, which she had hungrily devoured.

She had since been moved to more hospitable, if still rather Spartan, quarters. Someone had had the good sense to disconnect the power from this room entirely so that she could no longer access the surveillance systems, which had the upside of no longer being watched for every minute of the day. It would have left her dangerously bored if it weren't for the thoughtful pile of books and magazines they kept bringing her. Admittedly, several were of a decidedly poor quality, but they kept her entertained between meetings.

The "Psych Eval" as they called it was possibly the most tiresome of these. The man who interviewed her, Dr Andrew Garner, was tolerable enough, but she was rather sick of them poking about. At least his verdict didn't involve the word sociopath.

However, he had advised that she be kept under observation for at least another three months, which meant that for now she was confined to quarters. It was not exactly the freedom she had been counting on, but it would have to do.

Natasha came by at least once a day to chat and several times they had sparred in the base's gym. She was a ferocious fighter and, without her powers, Yan found herself beaten a few too many times for her liking, but she allowed that the agent had a reasonable advantage over her in terms of experience.

She was a good supervising office, that was for sure. Although she perhaps didn't have the best frame of reference, seeing as all the officers in the bunker were focused on pushing them past the limit rather than actually training them. And, despite a few initial mishaps, it seemed that the Russian was perfectly relaxed around her, if not necessarily in the realms of trust like Coulson.

In contrast, all the other staff, agents, scientists and random administrators alike, would leave her vicinity as quickly as possibly as soon as she came near them. It was good that they respected her powers, but Yan knew that their deep mistrust had the possibility of resulting in conflict. Most made no effort to hide their dislike of her either, but that did not concern her overly as she had made no efforts to be remotely nice to any of them. She wasn't there to make friends, after all.

Having finally agreed to a medical examination of sorts, Yan was currently standing in a training room waiting for Dr Yasin, who was the only scientist she would talk to. The woman in question was in the process of organising the setup of complex equipment around the room, barking out orders at her assistants and the unfortunate agents drafted in to help carry the heavier items.

"Be careful with that!" she snapped as a metal box surrounded by a complex tangle of wires was placed down too heavily for her liking. "It's very finely tuned!"

"What's it for?" Yan asked, stepping out of the way of the assistants who were too fascinated by her to be suitably intimidated. Natasha was leaning against one wall tapping away at a S.H.I.E.L.D. issued tablet. She was theoretically only there in case things got out of hand, but she was about as curious about her powers as the scientists, if perhaps for less scientific reasons.

"It's to measure sound waves," she replied brusquely, turning a few dials. "No, no, no, Thomas! What are you doing? That needs to be next to the – No! There, you idiot, else it'll overheat!"

"Soundwaves?" Yan queried, mildly confused. Her scientific knowledge covered only the topics considered necessary by the bunker, such as bomb-making and rewiring circuit boards to plant bugs. Deciding that things would go a lot more quickly if she intervened, she relieved the unfortunate Thomas of the heavy piece of equipment he was staggering around with. He flashed a grateful smile at her and nervously hurried out of her way in order to study her from a safe distance.

"Yes, I have a theory," Dr Yasin said. _A totally helpful answer._

"Is that everything?" Yan said impatiently, already regretting allowing the experiment to happen.

"Go stand over there," the scientist gestured to a spot handily marked with a cross. Yan obeyed irritably.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She snapped at the other assistant, who was unwisely attempting to attach wires to her forehead and chest. The young woman paled and tried to back away, despite the fact that her wrist was held none too gently in Yan's fist.

"Let her go, Antonia," Dr Yasin ordered. "The wires are to monitor your heart rate and breathing among other things, nothing sinister I assure you. Carry on Katherine,"

"It's Yan," she corrected, releasing the lab assistant and holding out her hand for the wires with some annoyance. After a few moments of wary hesitation, Katherine gave them to her and directed her as to where they should be placed. Dr Yasin clearly had a thing for full names as most other agents seemed to call her two lab assistants Katy and Quincy, the latter of which had its origins in some bizarre mission involving a lot of fruit.

"Alright we should be ready. Agent Romanov, over here please," Natasha put down the tablet and moved to stand behind the barrier with Dr Yasin. Yan thought the makeshift construction was excessive, she wasn't even testing out particularly dangerous powers.

"What am I doing exactly?"

"Just summon the Saran for now," She replied with an impatient huff that strongly suggested that she had already explained everything several times. She hadn't.

Yan inwardly rolled her eyes but complied, calling all the gifts of the Saran to her one by one. Even now, she still delighted in the feel of it settling into her skin and the rush of power that accompanied it. Thus, she managed to find some patience for her insistence that she summon and banish the Saran over and over to provide reliable information.

"Now this is interesting," the scientist exclaimed as she read the complex scribbles of data from the several screens surrounding her.

"What?"

"I had originally hypothesized that the matter was shrinking away, changing its density perhaps to account for a smaller available space. But your mass actually increases when it comes and your core temperature falls slightly, which would suggest that the space between the molecules is actually decreasing. Although that could be explained by some sort of masking effect caused by the insulating nature of the material, or your tattoos, which remarkably appear to have higher temperature levels than the rest of your body, according to the thermal scan..."

Yan zoned out for a bit as the technical jargon washed over her, struggling to follow with her limited knowledge. She was at least fairly confident that nothing important had been discovered. She would only allow the experiment to continue until something that could be used for tracking her or nullifying her powers was discovered, at which point she planned to tamper with the equipment so that the readings were distorted and became useless. If she had her way, she would not be here at all, but she understood the necessity to keep them satisfied and that feeding them insignificant snippets would suffice.

Aware that the lecture had come to an end, she disguised her lack of focus by asking another question without really knowing what she was talking about, "And the sound waves?"

"Fascinating! There are none,"

"None?" Yan struggled in vain to work out whether that was consequential or not. She caught Natasha's eye from across the room and saw by her raised eyebrow that she was not fooling her with her attempt at understanding.

"It is completely soundless, as if it were in a vacuum. Strange, I've never seen anything quite like it," Dr Yasin mused, furiously typing up notes. "OK, let's move on then,"

And so the experiments continued and she grew steadily more disinterested in the whole wearisome affair. Thus it was a welcome relief when Natasha abruptly announced that it would have to be delayed to another time as she was needed elsewhere. _Make that never,_ she thought ripping off all the wires attached to her body with some venom.

She had at first assumed that the agent had somewhere to be and didn't trust the scientists to supervise her, but when she had swept past the turning to her quarters she realised that something strange was happening. She had her hand to her ear and was picking up information on her earpiece as they walked.

"What's happening?"

"Something's come up, I'm taking you to see Coulson," a suitably cryptic reply, she rarely trusted her with information much more than five minutes in advance.

"What sort of a something?" she persisted none the less.

"You'll see,"

Realising that perseverance would get her nowhere in this case and that she would find out soon enough, Yan fell into silence. When they arrived at the base's hub, she began to get a feel for the gravity of the situation and that Natasha's tight-lipped reply to the scientists had been entirely for her benefit. All high ranking agents in the base, including Dr Yasin, were gathered and were staring at the screens with worried frowns. The few that noticed her arrival looked at her with surprise, clearly not expecting her to be there. Coulson was standing off to one side having a heated conversation on a phone, too far off for her to clearly make out what he was saying and with his back to her so she couldn't read his lips.

At first she couldn't make head nor tail of what they were all looking at. It seemed to be rather grainy satellite footage of a nondescript city block. It was an ugly, squat building and the low quality of the footage made it hard to identify, it could have been anywhere. But the date in the corner told her it was live footage and from the coordinates she would have guessed somewhere near the Canadian border, maybe North Dakota. Another screen was running facial recognition software through other satellite imagery, clearly in an attempt to locate someone. The pixelated blur of images was too fast for her to pick out any face in particular.

And most ominously the last screen had a countdown, with only a few hours to go.

Coulson at last finished his phone call and strode back into the middle of the room, "Alright everyone, this is a code red. An hour ago, S.H.I.E.L.D. received intel from an undercover agent that a planned terrorist attack has been set in motion. We've since lost contact with the agent. We know next to nothing about how or where this attack is going to going to take place, although there are likely to be multiple targets, possibly including a weapons convention in Texas, Congress, which meets in Washington today, and the New York Stock Exchange. So, as you can tell, we're stretched pretty thin,"

"We've been keeping an eye on this group for a while now and up til now they've barely come close to resembling a threat. Certainly not capable of anything on this sort of scale. But it seems they have ties to the Organisation, which controlled the bunker, and are therefore only a small cell of a much wider, much scarier network. And it looks like today they're going all out,"

A shiver went down her spine at the mention of the bunker and Yan began to understand why she was there. It was beginning to look like they might be releasing her into the field sooner than expected.

"What's the plan, Coulson?" Romanov asked, keeping one eye on Yan to ensure she didn't start looking at things she wasn't meant to.

"Most of you will be dispatched to possible targets to deal with the threat. The other bases have already started to deploy agents. From the information we have, including bomb designs from the bunker, if any one of these attacks is successful it will be a wide scale disaster. However, we're not going to let it get to that stage. The last message we received from our agent on the inside was that the weapons are all externally operated and linked by a satellite. Agent Romanov, you'll be leading a small team to this base," he gestured at the building on the screen, "Which is where the cell that is coordinating the attack has been running its operations from and where you'll be able to destroy the systems controlling the satellite. Peters, Darby, Manning, Wilson, you're going with her."

Elliot Wilson was a tall, Scottish agent whose love of cricket seemed to trump all other possible subjects in life. One time when Natasha had been detained on a mission, he had been drafted in to watch Yan and had spent the entire time explaining cricket to her and then forced her to watch several hours of footage from the last Ashes cricket tour. The sport had made little sense to her, despite his in depth explanation of the rules, and her patience had been sorely tested. Wilson seemed to have a constant supply of oranges on him at all times.

Christopher Manning was an Australian who had eventually saved her from Wilson's cricket rants, or rescued Wilson from her depending on your point of view. He assured her with a wink that Australia always won anyway the Ashes anyway, although having had almost every match's results described in detail to her, she doubted this statement. Thankfully, Manning had less of an obsession with cricket and held a lot of knowledge on the much more interesting subject, in her opinion at least, of art, thus he was of use to her. Having apparently volunteered for the Denver mission purely on the basis of going to see the Turner painting, he knew about her interest and had brought her several art books to peruse.

And Rick Darby was the agent who had shot her six times. When he had first started appearing at her training sessions or at her quarters with magazines and chocolate, she had distrusted his motives, suspecting that in the best case he was only coming out of guilt. But it had since transpired that he had a daughter roughly her age, which certainly explained the rather frivolous, girly nature of the magazines, and thus felt some sort of duty to her as well as guilt. She considered these feelings to be unnecessary and irritating. But she found herself forced to try and be nice to him as he was insufferably awkward around her otherwise.

Thus, when Coulson announced the team, Yan's suspicions about the reason behind her being in the control room were confirmed. With the exception of Peters, who had consciously avoided her at all costs since their first meeting, they were all agents who were reasonably well-disposed towards her. Besides there was a satellite that needed taking down.

"Explosives then? Or a virus?" Wilson asked, peeling another orange.

"Neither," Coulson answered with an excited grin, "Yan will be going with you, your brief is just to get her inside, she'll do the rest. Although, I must remind you that this you have a strictly non-combat role, Yan,"

"Isn't it a bit early for her to be out in the field? She isn't even fully cleared for duty yet, let alone for a mission of this importance and sensitivity," Peters argued, making a snide reference to the involvement of the bunker. She was convinced that Yan's loyalties remained firmly with her former captors.

"It's unorthodox, I know, but Director Fury has authorized it and this is an emergency situation. We don't have time to worry about whether all the paperwork's in order," Coulson said, effectively shutting down any further objections. "Right everyone, you know your teams, get to the hangars. I'll be organising things from this end,"

The room immediately began to empty as the agents hurried off to their allocated tasks. Natasha pulled her aside out of earshot of the others, "You ready for this?"

"Of course, you forget I've been going on missions all my life, I know the deal,"

"This is different," the agent gave her a serious look.

"I'm aware, Natasha, and I'm ready. I've got it all under control. If not, shoot me, it tends to bring me back to her senses," Yan grinned, expertly deflecting her concern.

"Don't joke, this is important," the Russian snapped but didn't press it any further. She passed her a hard-drive, "Here, you'll need this. Once you've destroyed the satellite you need to get as much data as you can onto that. And you heard what Coulson said, you're not cleared for combat missions yet and we don't want the Organisation finding out about your powers,"

Yan reluctantly agreed, stowing the hard drive in one of the capsules on her belt, which had an almost unlimited capacity being larger on the inside than on the outside. So far this had proved rather useful in her attempts to steal food and other items from meeting rooms, whenever she was feeling particularly bored.

They were in the air within half an hour and on their way to North Dakota, as she had correctly surmised. She had summoned the full force of the Saran and had put on her mask so that her face was obscured and Natasha wouldn't be able to overanalyse her every facial expression. It was hardly necessary, she was not a liability.

The cramped jet was definitely not designed with a comfortable journey in mind and, although Yan did not particularly care, she would have preferred to have been able to fly outside. She might even get there faster.

The flight lasted two hours and for the most part was spent in uncomfortable silence in part because Wilson, the chattiest of the number, was flying the plane. The situation was perhaps aggravated by the waves of hostility coming from Peters, who stifled any attempts at conversation with a pointed glare in her direction. _As if I'm going to learn some great S.H.I.E.L.D. secret through a discussion about Whistler._

Thus it was a relief when Wilson signalled that it was time to go. Once again, they had neglected to mention the rather important facts of the mission, in this case that they were going to jump out the plane. The others leapt up and strapped on parachutes, moving to the back of the jet.

"Alright, I'll going to circle and find some place to land nearby. Signal when you need me to come pick you up," the agent grinned, "Ready?"

And without waiting for a response he flicked a switch and the hatch opened, letting in a ferocious whoosh of air. The sky was a hazy purple tinged with gold at the crinkled edges of clouds and the glowing horizon. It was later than she had thought.

"Follow me," Natasha ordered and leapt out into the abyss, vanishing from view in a flash of red. The other three agents followed her swiftly, diving like swallows at dusk. Yan stepped forward and let herself fall, delighting in the rush of air streaming between her fingers and billowing over her frame. After a few seconds of freefall she transformed into a raven and flew lazily after the others, properly catching up with them as they pulled their parachutes close to the ground. They were aiming for the flat roof of the city block that supposedly contained the base.

Only when they had all landed and efficiently removed their parachutes, hiding them in an air vent, did she revert to her human form. This unexpected transformation elicited a few shocked gasps and she remembered that this was one power she had never actually revealed before.

"I was beginning to worry," Natasha remarked, absorbing the new information swiftly and acting as if she already knew, which was perhaps more to deceive Peters than anything else.

"That's a neat trick you've got, kid," Manning laughed.

"What can I say? The Saran does all the hard work," she grinned.

"Quiet," Peters hissed, gun already in her hands, "Let's go,"

The door down into the building was locked and they were about to shoot off the lock, but Yan waved them aside and wrenched it off its hinges. Natasha signalled that it was time to be silent and descended into the gloom down a grotty staircase. Three flights of graffiti stained, cracked and foul-smelling stairs later and there were still no signs of life more exciting than a rat.

"Have we got the right building?" Darby whispered as they filed out onto yet another empty floor with broken windows and piles of rubbish. "Are we even sure that there's a base here?"

"This better not be a wild goose chase," Natasha muttered and they carried on. The building appeared to be long abandoned and was in a terrible state of disrepair. But despite the fact that it seemed like it hadn't been used for years, it was structurally sound. The signs of damage were too perfect, exposed wires that didn't connect to anything, rubbish that had been arranged, doors that had been broken with axes. It didn't add up.

They reached the ground floor and the stairs went no further, but when she stood near the boarded up entrance, she could feel a buzz of energy travel up through her feet. This was technically impossible. An old, abandoned building like that should have been disconnected from the grid long ago and there was nothing for it to power.

Yan moved towards the wall, tracing the faint buzz of energy along the wires she was sure were sunk beneath the concrete floor. The other agents were having a heated discussion about whether they should break radio silence and contact Coulson or if they should try searching the next building over. She ignored them.

"The coordinates match exactly, if it's not here than there's no reason why it'd be anywhere close,"

"How trustworthy was this source anyway? How do we know this lead was even remotely worth – "

"I've found it," Yan interrupted, effectively silencing them. She beckoned them over to the wall and pointed out the suspiciously neat cracks in the plaster. "Elevator shaft,"

"Can you get it open?" Darby asked.

"Easy," she smirked and flexed her fingers, before laying her hands flat against the clammy stone and concentrating. There was a sudden spark and a section of the wall shifted backwards and slid sideways, revealing a gaping steal lined shaft. The bottom was out of sight and the cold breeze rising upwards suggested that it was a long way down.

"The lift is stuck at the bottom, it won't be moving for a while, so it's safe," she whispered, aware that the sound might carry down and betray their presence.

"The cables look strong enough to take our weight," Manning said.

"I need to get closer to access their computer system, these wires aren't attached,"

"Let's go," Natasha stepped round her and, having seized hold of a cable, she slid down it. Yan flew down after her, listening carefully to make sure the other three agents were following her. When they finally reached the bottom of the shaft, she got the doors to open and leapt out.

As luck would have it they emerged just off the main control room. A dozen or so agents were clustered around a screen watching the progress of the satellite. It was only a few minutes away from coming into range.

"GO!" Romanov mouthed at her and began shooting, taking out several agents before they even realised they were there. Peters, Darby and Manning followed suit, positioning themselves behind desks as barriers. She immediately utilized the power of the fifth guardians and sunk into the shadows, hoping that distracted as they were by the gun fight they wouldn't notice her.

She flew over their heads and tucked her body under a desk so that she wouldn't be caught by friendly fire. Clamping her hands to a computer, she forced her way into the system like a battering ram, smashing through layer upon layer of security, transferring as much information as she could to the hard drive. It was difficult, but she didn't need to worry about going undetected, and thus it was a lot faster than at S.H.I.E.L.D.

Suddenly she came upon the controls for the satellite. Breaking through the last line of defence was a feeling akin to bursting out of a gloomy forest into a clearing ablaze with sunshine. She did not just disable it. She destroyed it, setting the satellite into self-destruct and burning its operating codes from the systems.

When Yan finally pulled her conscious free of the crackling mess of shattered data that seemed to her like a wrecked, burning building, she realised that they were still fighting. The air was tinged with the mingling smells of fresh blood and gunshot residue. With the advantage of larger numbers, the enemy agents had consolidated their position and had trapped Natasha and the others behind their barricade of desks. Manning had been shot in the arm and Peters was completely trapped, unable to shoot at the enemy without pulling herself into the line of fire.

It was a supremely easy decision for Yan to ignore the parameters of her non-combat role in the mission and draw her weapons. She swept the legs out from under the nearest agent with a well-aimed kick and then shot several in the back, knocking them down like nine pins. They turned, reflexively shooting in her direction, but of course could not see her and every bullet missed by a mile. Having drawn their fire long enough for her comrades to reach more defendable positions, the fight swung in their favour, and was over fairly quickly.

The last man standing by some strange luck managed to shoot the weapon from her hand and to get close enough to her that she couldn't raise her other arm in time to shoot him. He grabbed hold of her and she reflexively wrapped her arms around his neck, snapping it easily.

"It's done," She announced, sliding her guns back into their holsters, having banished the gifts of the fifth guardian.

"Are there any other agents in the building?" Natasha asked, frowning slightly at her violence.

"No, the others were going to the bomb sites. No prisoners either. But plenty of weapons and experimental shit up on the upper floors. I've taken down their communications so the rest of the Organisation won't know this base is compromised for the time being,"

"Ok, Manning, Peters, get back up to the surface and radio Wilson to come get us, there's no signal down here. And radio HQ we're going to need another jet to come by and pick up all the weapons they have stored. We'll be up as soon as we've secured the building," The two agents nodded their understanding and hurried out.

As they checked the other rooms of the base, Natasha pulled her aside, "That was unnecessary. I understand your reason for ignoring the mission brief, but they could have been useful to us,"

Yan was surprised that she had found fault with her actions. She had not seen her as someone who would object to violence, "They all have cyanide capsules. They would be dead anyway. My way is quicker," and she stalked off so that no more could be said on the subject.

It was a relief to emerge from the bowels of the earth back into the clear night air. Even Peters had ceased her snide remarks, now that she probably owed her life to her. _She'd never admit it, of course._

She took care to fix the look of the dusky night's sky, sprinkled with silver pinpricks of life and hazy wisps of clouds, before she was taken back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. base.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review :D**


	15. Chapter 11

**Hi everyone,**

 **I'm afraid that it will be a while before I can post the next chapter as I am going on holiday and shall be without my computer for some time. Anyway, thanks to everyone who's reviewed, followed and favourited so far! There's honestly nothing more lovely than getting a notification and knowing that people appreciate my writing :) As always, please do continue to let me know what you think and alert me to any mistakes I might have made. I welcome constructive criticism as it really helps me improve my writing. I've been redrafting several of the earlier chapters so you might want to reread them, it'd be great to know whether my changes are improvements, as it were!**

 **Anyway, warnings in this chapter for slight violence and v dodgy science knowledge ;)**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Yan landed on the hard tarmac and leapt forward into a sprint without a moments' pause, bounding down the runway with almost inhuman speed. Bullets whizzed past her, missing her by inches and she cursed as one finally met its mark, tearing into her flesh. Thankfully it ripped straight through and the wound closed up and vanished within a few seconds. Still, she was painfully aware that it was taking longer than it had an hour ago. Not to mention the fact that she wouldn't have suffered the injury at all if she'd been allowed to wear the full strength of her armour and not just her mask.

To say that the mission was going badly would be a dramatic understatement. It had been an unparalleled disaster from start to finish and even Natasha, who was usually incredibly stoic, had let slip quite a few Russian expletives. It was supposed to be just a surveillance mission, planting bugs and hacking computers to gather intel in warehouses in Morocco owned by a subsidiary suspected of trading arms on behalf of a supposedly respectable French firm. It was definitely not supposed to involve being continuously shot at whilst running for their lives.

"I can see the plane," the Russian yelled behind her, struggling to keep pace despite her much longer legs. It was all Yan could do not to run at full speed, her survival instincts were screaming at her to go faster, but she could hardly abandon her supervising officer. She still wasn't supposed to be letting the enemy see her powers anyway, which was annoying to say the least as it rather defeated the point of having them in the first place.

It had been five weeks since they had foiled the terrorist attack and, since it had been such a success, she had been cleared for proper missions almost immediately afterwards. They had mostly been pretty low-key affairs involving her hacking skills, with were proving invaluable. She was beginning to wish she hadn't hoped for more excitement.

The plane was indeed approaching to pick them up, but from the look of it, it was in trouble. Black smoke billowed from one engine and it was starting to list, lurching off course as the pilot lost control. If it managed to land safely, there was no guarantee it would be able to take off again.

"It's been hit!" She exclaimed, her ears picking up the sound of revving engines as the trucks chasing them were drawing close.

"We'll deal with it when we get there!" Natasha replied, a touch too optimistically in Yan's opinion. She spun round and shot out the tires of the nearest truck sending it swerving into its neighbour in a spray of sparks. It rebounded and overturned, its engines blowing up in a ball of fire. Satisfied by the sight, she sprinted on before the soldiers in the other truck could get a more significant shot in.

The plane crashed down onto the tarmac, helpfully gliding towards them at a strange angle as only one of the landing wheels had come out. It slammed down as the other gave out suddenly and came to a shuddering halt. They rushed round the side, taking cover behind a crippled wing to fire at the remaining trucks.

"I've got a plan!" Yan exclaimed.

"It better not involve blowing anything up!" the agent reproached her, referring to her earlier suggestion that they just destroy the warehouses when things first started to go array.

"OK, that wasn't the best idea, but I'll stand by the fact it would have been easier than this. But no, that's not it. We need to get inside the plane,"

"It's wrecked. I don't see it getting back into the air anytime soon,"

"Trust me, I've got this,"

They got inside just in time to avoid the blast from a thrown grenade, which did little to improve the structure of the jet. The pilot seemed to have the opposite idea and tried to insist that they go back out and find another plane. One unimpressed look from Natasha was enough for him to hastily sit back down again.

"Can't promise this'll be smooth," Yan warned her and she wisely strapped herself in too.

She wasted no time in summoning her armour for strength and flew up to place her shoulders against the roof of the plane, bracing herself by wrapping her hands around the thick steel bars running along the sides. And then she just kept going. The battered metal groaned in protest and she was sure it would give out before they got back in the air again. But a gasp from the pilot told her it was working. She forced the remaining engine to start up again and by the twinned powers of her strength and the plane's rapidly diminishing energy source, they were far out of range before their pursuers got out the big guns.

Going in a direction over than up gave her some trouble at first, but then she realised that if she concentrated hard enough she could bring the plane under the influence of the Saran and merely sit on the floor. Still, it was a long and tiring journey back to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. base, from where they caught another jet back.

Thankfully, it was on the second leg of the journey that her exhausted body finally gave up pretending to be ok. Despite her best efforts to stay awake, she fell unconscious mere minutes after her vision started to blur at the edges.

* * *

Yan awoke, confused and rather irritable, to a sharp, clinical smell and to discover that there was a needle in her arm. The familiar waves of paranoia washed over her and she ripped it out, rolling out of the bed and promptly falling over again because her other arm was wrapped in a wire. When she tugged herself free of that she felt a sudden emptiness where the energy had been pouring in and the soreness in her limbs started to make itself known.

The sensible part of her was aware that this was probably just S.H.I.E.L.D. making sure she got better quickly and that it was nothing more than an energy source and a drip. The angry part of her had decided that it was an attempt at restraining her and a lot of malicious chemicals aimed at neutralising her powers. This reasoning had absolutely no logic, but unfortunately it was the hungry part too.

Thus the unlucky doctor who had just entered to check how she was doing found himself slammed backwards against the wall, with one dagger held against his throat and another pinning him down by his clothes.

"Where am I?" she snapped.

"Err?" the doctor replied, looking both confused and terrified.

She snarled, indicating that making her ask twice would not be a good career move on his part, which elicited a garbled answer that sounded like "S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary".

"And what exactly is this?" she asked, spitting out her words so that he flinched with each syllable. She showed him the needle, and he seemed to be under the impression that she was about to stab him with it.

"It's just a drip! Nothing sinister!" he said nervously.

"What for?"

"Hypoglycaemia,"

"What?"

"Low blood sugar," his professional ability to deal with stress was beginning to take hold now that he'd had time to take stock of the situation. "You tired yourself out on your mission, used up too much energy. The drip was just to replace the nutrients that your body was running low on, nothing to worry about,"

"And the wire?" she could feel her anger starting to abate, especially since he looked so foolish, struggling to keep his balance on the slippery floor and desperately trying to prevent his glasses from slipping off his face.

"Agent Romanov said that you can absorb energy sources and thus I thought it would help you if you had that too…" he drifted off at the fierce look in her eyes. "Did it work?"

She declined to answer him and instead walked off towards the computer in the room, ignoring his audible sigh of relief to no longer have her knife pressed against his neck. She hacked it and found his meticulous notes on her, running from his analysis of her medical files from the bunker up to the current situation.

"Um… I wonder…" he started awkwardly and she gave in and set him loose, pulling out the dagger and returning it to its sheath by her side. He scrambled fully upright and straightened his lab coat self-consciously. "Thanks,"

Yan regarded him with some surprise, unimpressed that he would thank her for releasing him from her capture. She decided that the only thing she was interested in at that moment was finding a hot meal, preferably somewhere isolated. Her tolerance for other people was reaching dangerously low levels and the idea of having to interact in any way seemed insufferable. She was probably meant to be debriefed after that disaster of a mission, but putting it simply it just wasn't going to happen.

"Wait," the doctor called after her as she made to leave.

"What!" she snapped, wishing she had left him pinned to the wall.

"You err… you can't leave until I've officially cleared you for active duty," he stuttered, looking both apologetic and embarrassed

"I have accelerated healing, I don't need a doctor,"

"You can't heal hypoglycaemia," he pointed out. "So, unless you want to collapse in _the middle_ of the mission next time, I suggest you take my advice,"

His attempt at an authoritative tone was marred by the fact that his hands were shaking slightly. But despite Yan's current disinterest of listening to orders of any kind, she decided there was the possibility of there being something worthwhile in what he had to say. She nodded her agreement.

The doctor, showing both relief and professional satisfaction that she had acquiesced to his instructions, motioned for her to follow, "My office is just down the hall,"

She read the nameplate on the door as she entered, "Dr Theodore Maddison", and stored it for future reference.

She sat down, pulling her legs up underneath her to disguise the fact that her feet didn't touch the floor. After rifling through a couple of desk drawers, Dr Maddison produced a number of small vials and passed them to her. She inspected them with distrust.

"That's glucose solution," he explained. "If your energy levels are dropping too low you should inject yourself with one of those and it should tide you over until you can reach a power source,"

Yan's main experience with glucose had been when they were being taught how to disguise an assassination as a natural death. Causing a diabetic coma had been the first they learnt, as it was the easiest to do. Faking a suicide was much harder to do convincingly as it was difficult to hide signs of a struggle.

She stored the little bottles in her belt, which had slowly been accumulating stuff from hard drives to tea bags. As she had yet to reach the limits of its capacity, she had not been throwing anything away and her desire to hold on to useless stuff stemmed in part from the fact that she had never been allowed possessions before.

"I've been looking at the data Dr Yasin has been collating and from some rough measures of your metabolic rate, and I'd say you need to be consuming closer to four thousand calories a day to keep track with the amount of energy you expend,"

"But I absorb energy, that should be enough to fuel my powers," Yan argued

"That seems to be the case for most of the time, and if you had access to an energy supply all the time during missions – incidentally, you should consider carrying batteries with you, kind of like electronic glucose if you think about it – where was I?" it seemed he had a tendency to ramble, "Oh yes, so when you use your powers without access to an energy supply, it draws on your own strength, which doesn't necessarily get replaced later. Also, your natural metabolism has almost doubled due to the bonding of the symbiote to your cells, so you burn more energy doing normal things like regulating your body temperature,"

"Right," she decided that she wasn't going to protest against eating more. Food was food.

"And also, you need to eat more to provide other things – minerals, vitamins et cetera – that electricity doesn't give you. Especially when you're injured, healing bones for example requires a lot of calcium," he gave her a bottle full of multi-coloured tablets, "You should start taking supplements for that as well,"

There was only so much she was willing to consume without question, unidentifiable pills were definitely not on that list.

"It works by magic, I don't need medicine," She scowled.

"Well, it's only a theory," Maddison replied, looking disheartened. "Your iron levels were very low, Vitamin D and B6 too, it'll leave you fatigued if you don't correct that. And I was talking to Dr Yasin and she agreed that it is likely your powers are dampened if your own energy levels are low, no matter how much electricity you absorb,"

"When did you talk to her?" Yan asked, disliking the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew how to dampen her powers, "Wait, for how long was I unconscious?"

"Umm, thirteen hours? Give or take," he said "I talked to her earlier this morning, and Agent Romanov, she was worried about you,"

Although Yan doubted that Natasha would show any sort of emotion close to discernible worry, she was angry that she had shown such obvious weakness that it was enough to elicit concern. She could not afford to show that kind of weakness. _If it stops this from happening again, I'll gladly take those damn supplements._

She snatched the bottle from the table and swept out, ignoring the doctor's calls. She had definitely had enough for one day.

Returning to her quarters, she worked her way through the contents of her fridge, drank several cups of coffee and settled down in a corner to read. However, she soon found that she was too restless to concentrate and found herself in the firing range.

The few other agents that were there when she arrived did not try talking to her for long after their first attempts received no reply, quickly getting the message that she wasn't in the mood. She did not use her own guns as there was little point in practicing with them. Instead she experimented with a few of the handguns that were in the range and some of the more experimental S.H.I.E.L.D. inventions that she was pretty sure were not covered by her security clearance.

Her aim was accurate, honed by years of practice, but it still gave her some satisfaction to rely on her own skill to hit the target. With the exception of the gun that, to her surprise, fired at a forty five degree angle, she did not miss.

Yan noticed when Agent Coulson appeared behind her, but she ignored him and continued, reloading and firing again. Eventually, the ammunition on the bench beside her ran out and she resigned herself to having to talk to him.

"Coulson," she acknowledged his presence without turning round, dismantling her gun and laying each part down.

"Yan,"

"What do you want?" she asked bluntly, finally looking at him and leaning backwards to rest against the bench.

"Heard you were up, how are you feeling?"

"Fine, what do you want?" she repeated her question crossly.

"We've got a new lead on the Organisation, looks like another bunker," he finally revealed. "If you're up for it – "

"Where?" Yan interrupted, feeling slightly better. S.H.I.E.L.D. had struggled to find any sign of the Organisation after their failed terrorist attack as it had practically vanished. The information she had collected from the last base and from the bunker had been of little use as they operated on a system of isolated cells that knew little or nothing about one another and so could not take each other down when they discovered.

"Russia, site of a former steel factory by the border with North Korea," he raised an eyebrow at her, but to his credit made no comment. If she had been in a more tolerant mood, she would have appreciated that he was able to tell when it was best to just treat her like an agent and leave feelings out of it.

"Surveillance?" _it better bloody not be._

"No, it looks like we've lost the element of surprise. They'll probably have cleared out by the time you arrive,"

"So what's the plan?"

"We can't send in a full offensive team that close to Vladivostok, the Russian authorities are still up in arms over the last time we entered their airspace. You need to get in and secure the base, salvage as much as you can, take prisoners if possible. We haven't been able to take any of them alive yet. Back up will arrive by road to get you and anything else out an hour or so after we drop you. The lorries are posing as freight vehicles headed for China and once they're across the border you'll be transferred to a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet and be out of there,"

"Agent Romanov is coming?"

"She's needed elsewhere," Coulson replied in a typically cryptic fashion. "Another agent will be accompanying you today,"

"Who?"

* * *

 **Dun Dun Dun! Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow, favourite and review :D**


	16. Chapter 12

**Hi everyone,**

 **I'm back! Well, this chapter was both super fun and super hard to write, especially trying to get the characterization of Hawkeye right. Please do let me know what you think of it, criticism is definitely welcomed at this point! Also, thanks again to everyone who has followed, favourited and reviewed so far!**

 **Warnings for language in this one (blame Clint) and a bit of violence.**

 **Hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

Agent Clint Barton – or Hawkeye as Coulson had referred to him as, she still wasn't sure if he was being serious or not – was so far proving to be the most irritating person Yan had ever met. She was currently steadfastly ignoring him with the hope that he might miraculously disappear if she did it for long enough. _Or fall down a hole._ Sadly it seemed her complete lack of a response did little to dampen his enthusiasm for talking.

" – and of course you have to consider wind speed and direction, else a perfectly good shot will end up going completely off track. The good thing about that is that you can get the shot to bend nicely if you're firing round the corner or something – " he was currently going on about how best to use a bow and arrow, another thing Yan found completely ridiculous about him. Such an archaic weapon seemed more of a hindrance than a help to her. _Why the hell doesn't he just use a gun, for fuck's sake?_

They were picking their way through the thick, coniferous forest towards the old steel factory, having been dropped about a mile away so as to avoid being detected. The plane flight itself had been near interminable as her bad mood had clashed with his seeming desire to constantly be talking. She was beginning to suspect that his inane chatter was partly spurred on by the fact she had said nothing to him bar frosty, monosyllabic replies to the few questions she considered necessary to the mission at hand.

"Hang on a minute, I'm going to take a look above the tree line, see if we're getting close," Barton suddenly stopped and, jumping from where he was precariously balanced on a tree root, grabbed hold of a low hanging branch and swung himself up into the tree with surprising ease. From there he leapt into the neighbouring tree and swiftly scrambled up to the top. She would have been impressed at his agility if she wasn't so unimpressed with the rest of him.

"Yeah, it's not far now, no sign of any activity from there though," He jumped down again and Yan carried on, feeling that the deviation had been entirely unnecessary.

"You know," he said, "It's normally considered polite to reply when people talk to you,"

"I wasn't aware that any of what you were saying required a reply,"

"Ah ha!" he clapped triumphantly. "She speaks!"

"Yes, I am indeed capable of speech, it's a miracle," She snapped.

He grinned at her, "I was beginning to wonder, seeing as I've been talking for the past two hours with no reply. I was running out of things to say,"

"You don't say," she muttered darkly. She had honestly reached the point where the fact that he was Natasha's partner ( _goodness knows why)_ was the one thing preventing her from trying to kill him just to shut him up.

"Hey!"

"What now?"

"I asked you a question. Rule of human interaction number 2: you have to answer people's questions,"

"I wasn't listening," Yan answered truthfully.

"Well that's rule number 3, well probably it should be rule number 1 if we're ranking them in terms of importance – "

"Do you actually have a question?" she interrupted.

"Oh right, yeah. I wanted to know whether you were picking up any sensors nearby, they could still be there, in which case we don't want them to see us coming,"

"It doesn't work like that," she replied, astounded that he had something actually useful to say. "I'd have to be in contact to know whether there was a camera or a motion sensor or any kind. But I haven't detected any energy sources so I don't think there are any in the vicinity. They won't have anything of that kind anyway,"

"No?"

"At the bunker we were up in the mountains, the only passers-by we got were wolves and mountain lions. The ground was covered with snow half the year anyway, so any wires left exposed would freeze up and break. That tends to be their style. In all likelihood, the base will be underground, the factory is just a cover. Anyone coming by will see nothing of interest,"

"Canada, wasn't it?"

"Yes," stopping abruptly, she grabbed hold of the agent and yanked him backwards, almost knocking him over.

"Hey, what was that for?" he complained.

"Mine," Yan pointed at the almost concealed explosive, which he had been about to step on.

"Shit! I thought you said – "

"I said there wouldn't be any cameras, I didn't say anything about mines,"

"You lead the way then," he gestured for her to go on. "And next time, warn a guy before you manhandle him,"

She inwardly rolled her eyes and marched on, scanning the ground for the tell-tale glint of metal, half buried in the drifts of snow that sparsely covered the ground. It was not long before the trees started to thin out and they reached a high, rusted fence topped with barbed wire. The old steel factory stood a few hundred yards beyond it, a dark, brooding building that had definitely seen better days. Most of the windows were smashed and the insidious creep of ivy had long ago conquered the walls, creeping with a winding coil around the dilapidated chimneys. Here the snow lay much thicker on the ground and was piled up against the walls. In places it was churned up by tyre tracks.

She had drawn a dagger to start cutting through the fence when she picked up the sound of engines in the distance. At first she thought it was S.H.I.E.L.D. arriving early, but the accompanying shouts brought back memories of familiar commands and she realised that the Organisation were still there.

"Stay here," Yan ordered Barton and then leapt into the air, transforming into a raven and climbing high above the treeline with a few powerful wing flaps.

Angling her tiny body to catch the upward gusts of air, she glided towards the front of the factory where she found a row of waiting trucks, being loaded with cargo. It seemed most had already left, but the few remaining were currently being filled by a group of young men whom she recognised as fellow soldiers by their uniform. She identified the source of the shouting as a scientist who was directing them as they lifted up heavy crates. He was speaking in Russian that was too complicated for her basic knowledge to comprehend, but the gift of the seventh guardian immediately translated it for her. Not surprisingly he did not reveal any important details.

She dove to get a closer look at them, memorising the bar codes neatly marked on the side. Landing on the far side, hidden from view by the gift of the fifth guardians, she returned to human form and planted trackers she had been storing in her belt. That done, she returned to the air, circling a few times to create the impression that she really was a carrion bird. Although she doubted they would be expecting surveillance from a raven.

"Is that you, or am I just talking to a random bird?" Barton asked as she landed on the other side of the fence, stamping his feet to keep warm. "I can't believe I'm talking to birds right now, I'm losing it,"

Regaining her human form, Yan sliced through the fence with one swipe of her sword so that he could come through. Although she deeply wished she could leave him on the other side.

"OK, it is definitely a rule that you warn people before you do that! I mean, shit!" the agent exclaimed, indicating the nature of "that" with vague hand gestures.

"You know I can turn into a bird," Yan pointed out. "It's in my file,"

"And? It's still very weird! And whilst we're on the subject, it's always a good idea to tell your team mates what you're doing before disappearing,"

"From now on I'll make sure to narrate my every action to you beforehand," She replied sarcastically.

"You gonna tell me then, or what?"

"I'm sorry was that meant to be a question? I thought you were merely setting forth another _life_ rule,"

"Yes, it was a question! It certainly required a response, and now we're back to rule one again,"

"I heard engines, so I investigated," Yan snapped. "Four trucks being loaded up and about thirty men. Looks like they're the last few, so I doubt we'll find much inside. I placed trackers on the trucks so we should be able to find out where they're going later,"

"And they didn't see you?"

"Of course not,"

"Good work, kid," Barton grinned at her and she felt distinctly patronised. Turning on her heel she set off towards the factory, hovering above the ground so as to avoid having to wade through the snow.

They got in through a broken window and split up to scout the ground floor. The roof had mostly collapsed, allowing the harsh daylight in to reveal the broken machinery and long abandoned furnaces. Weather and time had played their part in wearing down the building, such that it was a mere twisted shell housing piles of wreckage. There was not much of interest and nothing of worth left behind.

Once she had detected a hum of energy which betrayed the presence of underground wires, it did not take her long to find the lift. Hawkeye appeared next to her, his bow in hand with the bowstring pulled taut and an arrow already notched.

"The second floor is all clear, or what's left of it at any rate," he said. Yan didn't bother asking him how he had managed to get to the second floor when there hadn't seemed to be any stairs. It had become clear that he had a head for heights and an ability to scale sheer surfaces that suggested that a squirrel would be a more appropriate animal for him to be named after.

"Lift," she indicated, forcing the two doors apart. "I'm going down, hope that's enough warning for you,"

"It's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic when your face is a blank slate," Hawkeye grinned, referring to her mask. "Rule number five: expressions are a good thing,"

"Seven,"

"What?"

"That's the seventh irritating thing you've said to me today,"

"So you _have_ been listening?"

"You've made it very difficult to do otherwise," Yan snapped, to which his only response was an infuriating smile. Smothering the desire to push him down the lift shaft, she flew down it.

The base was relatively small and in a state of disarray. The scientists had clearly not had much time to evacuate, as quite a lot had been left behind. She remembered when she had been in a halfway base after a mission and the order had come through that it had been compromised and S.H.I.E.L.D. were close. They had destroyed everything and then flooded the base from a nearby river, collapsing the building on top just to make sure nothing would be found. In comparison, this seemed a very lax job.

Thus she was beginning to feel a little suspicious that not all was quite what it seemed. However, when she hacked into the surveillance system, she could find no other people in the base.

"Looks like they left in a hurry, huh," Barton commented. "I'm going to take some of this stuff up to the surface, think you can get the lift working again?"

"It's done,"

Whilst he began loading the lift up with the various crates of weapons, files and unidentifiable devices that had been left behind, Yan wandered further into the base. Most of the rooms were empty and held nothing of interest, yet something about it left her uneasy. It felt like it had not truly been abandoned, as if people were there but had only just left the room as she walked in.

In fact, only the main control room showed any significant signs of an attempt to destroy evidence. All the databanks had been overturned and the screens had been vigorously smashed in. The scattered shards of glass crunched beneath her feet. Exposed wires sparked and crackled, torn out from the walls and raggedly cut. The oily scent of lighter fluid hung in the air.

She picked her way through the wreckage towards the main computer, which appeared to still be active despite their best efforts. For a moment she considered waiting for Barton to return first so that she could have someone guarding her back. But she dismissed the idea out of hand. She would be fine on her own.

It was only once Yan was deep in the computer system, having smashed her way through several layers of security, that she realised her mistake. She had begun to copy files onto the hard drive in her belt and was instantly suspicious that it was all still intact, when the usual protocol was to delete everything. But by then it was too late.

The systems had slammed back down behind her, leaving her trapped and cut off from her body, rapidly losing control. It was then that the virus left behind in the systems to catch any intruders reared its ugly head and attacked, degrading the streams of code that formed her thought processes such that she could not even begin to fight back. Her stricken conscious writhed and thrashed, wracked with agonising jolts of pain. Her one point of focus was the countdown that was imprinting itself onto the walls of her head, branding her flesh as it hurtled viciously towards zero.

She could see fire and billowing smoke, hear metal screaming as it was rent apart and blasted away and the fierce hiss as snow evaporated instantly, feel the violent expulsion of air that flattened trees and ripped the earth from the ground and the scorching heat that ate at her skin. Everything would burn.

And then it went black.

* * *

"Yan! Come on, wake up!" It took her a while to recognise that the shouts were happening outside her voice and a while longer to identify it as belonging to Barton. Regaining the feeling in her limbs, she realised that he had his arms wrapped around her, having dragged her backwards away from the computer.

Feeling suddenly very claustrophobic, she pushed him away and ripped off her mask leaning forward to retch and cough up blood. Her skin didn't seem to fit her like her tattoos were writhing beneath the surface.

"Shit, kid,"

She blinked at him, trying to realign her thoughts back into an order that made sense. Something half buried was tugging at her mind, demanding that she remember it, but she was struggling to extricate it from the storm of pain and confusion.

"What the hell were you thinking?" He asked, frowning at her.

"What?" she slurred, not understanding why he was angry.

"You should have waited for me to get back before doing that,"

"You were busy," Yan said, realising that it was a terrible excuse but not feeling up to explaining her motives in a sentence longer than three words.

"Right," he snorted.

"And besides, I knew what I was doing," she insisted, feeling slightly more together.

"The evidence suggests otherwise," he pointed angrily at the main computer bank, which had now definitively gone quiet, due to the arrow lodged in the middle of it.

 _EMP arrow, huh_. She registered this fact with some interest. _Perhaps a bow isn't such a useless weapon after all._

The half-buried thought was becoming hard to ignore, rising from the depths of her mind to yell at her to just remember. Barton was still lecturing her on the idiocy of her actions but she had faded out his words, focusing on the memory to try and drag it out. What had she found before the system shut down?

 _Everything will burn._

The horrifying images surged to the front of her mind like raging waters cascading forth once the floodgates have been torn open. Turning towards the door she took Hawkeye by the arm and began to drag him out of the room, interrupting him mid-sentence.

"What are you doing?" he asked, both confused and considerably alarmed by the look on her face.

"We have to go, this place is going to explode,"

"Fuck!" he ceased his resistance and ran after her to the lift, which was thankfully waiting. "How long?"

"No more than a couple of minutes,"

Yan shocked the lift into working and, before the doors had even had a chance to close, sent it shooting upwards towards the ground floor at such a pace that there was a shower of sparks as it scraped along the walls of the lift shaft. As she jumped out at the top she felt the sudden contraction of power as all the remaining energy in the building was sucked towards the generators that were primed to blow. Without thinking she wrapped an arm round Barton and leapt into the air, pushing at the limits of her speed to clear the factory in time.

Beneath them the concrete floor ruptured and surged upwards, the ground pulsating and rolling like the sea, as the shockwave erupted and the explosion began. The walls was blown out with such force that each brick separated itself from its brethren, and the heat melted most of the iron that had been supporting the building, warping it into twisted, distorted shapes. The old furnaces exploded, making their last contribution of smoke and fire to the sky. A dark, swollen column rose so high into the sky that it could be seen for miles around. It flashed with tongues of flame like a wrathful storm cloud lit by veins of lightening, about to unleash its destructive power upon the ground that has done nothing to deserve its ire.

And all of a sudden the air rushed back in, dragging tonnes of debris and churned up earth and even whole trees, lifted from their roots, back towards the centre of the explosion. The vacuum created by this unexpected retreat sucked in the black smoke and extinguished the fires that were raging wildly. From all that power was left only a charred crater, pockmarked with lumps of twisted machinery and smashed walls, still smouldering with the occasional sputtering fire that was unwilling to go out.

It was on the far edge of this that Yan landed, touching down gently and extricating herself from Barton's overly tight grip. She had swerved to the left once she had escaped the factory and narrowly avoided the ball of fire that had erupted. She could still feel where the searing heat had scorched her skin. In her mind she was still burning.

She realised that she had been a fool. She had allowed herself to be angry at her earlier weakness and, desperate to prove that she was in control, had rushed headlong into the mission without consideration to anything other than a reckless desire to get back into the field and away from the boredom of the endless grey corridors of S.H.I.E.L.D. She had not been ready for the mission. Coulson had seen it and tried to give her a way out, but in her stubbornness she had ignored him. It was a decision that very nearly proved to be fatal.

"Well, I can't say I want to do that again. You've got quite a turn of speed, kid, I'm pretty certain I left my lunch behind," Barton laughed, distracting her from her self-reproof.

"They cover their tracks well," Yan said. "This has been a waste of time,"

"Bit harsh, there's still the trackers on the trucks right? Did you get anything before it, well, attacked you?"

"Not much, I think it's probably been destroyed by the virus anyway,"

She began to walk off in the direction that led back to the road. Backup should be arriving soon, not that there was anything more that could be done. But she would be glad to get the mission over with and get out of there.

"Hey wait, I'm not done talking to you," He called after her and she stopped, turning to face him angrily. _I am so not in the mood for this._

"Yes, thank you very much, I know. I fucked up, jeopardised the mission, blah blah blah. Can we just skip the lecture?" she scowled at him.

"Hey, what? No! That wasn't what I was going to say at all," He protested.

"What then?"

"I mean sure, you shouldn't have hacked into that computer without waiting for me. But it's not like you could have known that would happen, it hasn't done so before right?"

"No," she began to wonder why indeed that had happened. _Did they know I was coming? How could they?_ No, it was more likely that the virus had been designed to block any attempt to access the bunker's files and to set off the explosion so as to kill S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, whom they had been expecting after all, and prevent them from following them.

"Right, so there you go, not your fault. Besides, we got out of there so no harm done. What I wanted to say is that you have to start trusting your teammates to have your back,"

"Is that another rule for human interaction?" Yan asked sarcastically.

"No, it's a survival rule," Barton said frowning, "I'm being serious, if you're watching your back all the time you can't be focusing on the mission on hand and you shouldn't be in the field,"

"I barely know you, I'm not just going to trust you with my life. That would be idiotic,"

"That doesn't matter. We work for the same side, it's in my interests to protect you and the same goes for other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents,"

"What do you mean?"

"Look, it cuts both ways right? I trust you and you trust me. I mean I trusted you to get me out of there. I'm gonna be honest, I wasn't expecting to be dragged a few hundred feet into the air like a bat outta hell, but I wasn't about to fight you on it, you know? And it's probably the case that nine times out of ten it'll be you saving my ass, but if you're in trouble I will help you. But it only works if you trust me to do that. That way you can make mistakes and it won't matter cos I've got your back, you got it?"

Yan considered this for a moment. It made sense really and, despite any doubts she had about the idea of blindly putting her life into the hands of a trained killer, she knew he was right. Besides, he was suddenly much less annoying.

"Yeah, I guess," she conceded and then added, "Like how that Agent Hunt you mentioned earlier trusted his agents even when his agency shut down,"

"Oh, shit no, well yes," Barton said, looking appalled, "That's the plot of Mission Impossible four,"

"What?"

"It's a film,"

"Why the hell were you narrating the plot of a film to me?"

"In my defence, it's a very good film," He protested. "And I was running out of things to say. Besides, I thought you weren't listening!"

Yan laughed, "I have no idea how Romanov puts up with you,"

"It's a genuine mystery," He grinned at her. "Though she always makes sure to point out my short comings,"

"Let's get out of here. The explosion can't have escaped the notice of the Russian authorities,"

"Shit, yeah. They could probably see it in Vladivostok, Coulson won't be best pleased about that,"

And with that last expletive, they set off back through the forest to the rendezvous point.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading :D Don't forget to follow, favourite and review!**


	17. Chapter 13

**Hi everyone!**

 **Ugh, back at school two weeks and I'm already ready for a holiday! However my life has been greatly improved by the sudden discovery of Kpop and its far too attractive stars ;)**

 **Anyway, thanks as always to everyone who has followed and favourited so far. At the risk of sounding terribly whiny, I have been mourning the lack of reviews for the past few chapters and I would dearly love to get some, pretty please? It is particularly helpful as I am lacking a beta and thus would appreciate people pointing out any mistakes I may have made.**

 **Enjoy :)**

* * *

Yan gazed at the glowing blue cube with some fascination. The light it emitted was in turns soft, verging on unnoticeable and practically blinding, harsh and alien. There seemed to be no pattern to these changes but an unsettlingly random sequence that diverged from what was expected every time it seemed a pattern had been found, almost as if it delighted in confounding people. It was in many senses seemingly alive, but she was not sure if this made it more or less unsettling, whatever its intent.

At the moment it was pulsating, and the white veins that sliced through its interior flashed with bolts of energy, its life blood darting around its system. They were distorted by its crystalline structure that twisted light in a hundred unexpected way and reflected as much or as little of it back as took its fancy. When she touched it experimentally and against everyone's advice – what could she say? It had a gravitational pull – this energy shot up her fingers and left her with a pleasant glow akin to several hours' decent sleep. That she had not intended to draw any power from it concerned her, but she could detect no malicious intent buried in it so she let it be.

"So? What can you tell us?" Coulson asked. She had been brought to the facility, a very secret one that was hidden far out in the desert, in order to inspect this Tesseract, as it was called. The journey there had been sufficiently cloak and dagger to pique her interest and she had next to no idea where she actually was despite her best efforts to discover the flight plan. But she took it as a sign of their growing trust of her that they were showing it to her at all barely three months after they'd first met her. _Although they could just be desperate._

She had been pleased to see Coulson again, as he had been away from the base for a couple of weeks. Out of all the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents she had met so far, he was probably the only one whose company she actually enjoyed. Of course, she respected Romanov and didn't mind going on missions with Manning, Wilson or Darby as long as there wasn't too much small talk involved, which was more than she could say for most. As for Hawkeye, well, he irritated the hell out of her for half the time. But Coulson, he actually understood her and was able to follow the turbulent fluctuations of her moods to an extent that he never annoyed her.

Yan had consulted with Ca'lun and she had shown her a whole avenue's worth of books on the subject. The tesseract was one of six gem stones possessing supposedly infinite power and imaginatively named "Infinity gems". They'd apparently been forged at the start of the universe from the collapse of singularities, although seeing as this was mostly passed down as folklore she suspected that that wasn't entirely true. However, she was in doubt as to the extent of their power. Most of the memories she saw were from the end days of planets besieged by destruction.

 **Be warned, Lady Yan.** The goddess had said. **For the Tesseract and its kind possess an uncontrollable power, a power most cannot even begin to understand or control, that corrupts and destroys even the most honourable of intentions. You would be wise to remove it from the hands of humans. The star of Saranheim was destroyed by a being who wielded this power and we shall not forget.**

Indeed most of what she had seen had suggested that it was perhaps best for these gems to be thrown far away, but she was not about to take it off S.H.I.E.L.D. It was unlikely that her employment would continue if she had an all-powerful energy source. Besides, they'd had the thing since 1949 if their records were anything to go by, and they hadn't blown anything up yet.

"According to the Saran's archives, it's an Infinity stone," Yan informed Coulson.

" _An_ infinity stone?" he questioned, picking up on the use of the indefinite article, "There are more?"

"Yeah, it's one of six,"

"Any clue as to where the rest might be?"

"No," they turned back to stare at the mesmerising glow of the cube. Scientists were bustling around them, adjusting the machinery that held it in place in thick coils of metal and piping. There was no natural light in the room as it was fairly deep underground, but none of the lights were on as the blue glow lit up the whole place. Apparently it was powering half the base and they still knew next to nothing about.

"The Saran was rather adamant that I apprise you of the dangers," she added, deciding she might as well let them know, even if she was sure they would carry on regardless.

"Oh?"

"The infinity stones' proclivity for destruction when mishandled, or indeed when the handler is perfectly in control, appears to be unparalleled. You could power a city, perhaps even an entire country, but you could just as easily destroy one whether intentionally or otherwise,"

"How wide is the evacuation zone?"

Yan snorted mirthlessly, "Let's put it this way. If that thing goes full boom, as it were, they'll be worrying about the fall out in the next galaxy over,"

"You reckon you could contain it at all?"

"Maybe, some of it certainly," She mused. "But the clue is in the use of infinite. There's only so much I can do, it might not be enough to make a difference,"

"So all told not a very positive evaluation, then?"

"Well, you did ask," She laughed. "It's probably unlikely that'll happen though, just don't let it fall into the wrong hands,"

"We'll need you out here if anything happens, of course,"

"I doubt that'll be a problem, you know where to find me,"

* * *

"Do film makers have any idea of reality?" Yan asked incredulously, "He would have died at least fifty times by now,"

"You have to allow them a little Artistic licence, wouldn't be dramatic otherwise," Barton defended, his words muffled by the fistful of popcorn he had just stuffed into his mouth. They were watching Mission Impossible four and, since she had already been subjected to the first three, her patience for the unrealistic drivel was waning.

He was stopping over for a couple of days before being transferred elsewhere, recovering from an injury sustained from his last mission. He had turned up that morning, declared that he was incredibly bored and had then settled himself in her quarters and insisted he "educate" her on the finer merits of all the many films she had not yet had a chance to see. And all this without consulting her first.

"How can you enjoy this? It's ridiculous!" she complained, "In no world is jumping off a ten storey car-park going to end in a mild leg injury,"

She was actually quite pleased that he was there, as it gave her a reasonable excuse to avoid being subjected to another tiresome scientific experiment. And she was finding the films fairly enjoyable, despite their ludicrous premise and gaping plot holes. However, she certainly wasn't going to let him know that.

"Oh come on, it's not that bad," Barton grinned, perfectly aware that Yan wasn't as cross as she made out. "That's half the fun, anyway. Right, next one?"

"There's a fifth? You have to be kidding me,"

"I am, sorry, that's it," He laughed. "We could start on James Bond films though,"

"What are they? Wait no don't tell me, a maverick agent travels around the world drinking lots and seducing anything that moves and somehow manages to foil a world ending plot all by himself without getting so much as a bruise,"

"That's a pretty accurate description,"

"So basically Mission Impossible five,"

"There are some differences," he protested.

"Like what exactly?"

"Err… Bond is English,"

"Is that it? Do they just change the names in these scripts? They must have run out of ideas a while ago,"

"The Bond films are based on books though, so there is that,"

"Should have just left it as a book," She muttered crossly, having finally managed to wrestle the bowl of popcorn off of him.

"You are no fun," Barton pouted.

"I will watch anything as long as it's not another action spy movie, Barton, a-ny-thing!"

"Ok, Ok, fine, not Bond then," He held his hands up in mock defeat and she rolled her eyes at his childishness.

* * *

Yan looked up at the six foot high neon letters fixed on the top of the glittering building, a mile of glass and steel sweeping up to a shining pinnacle. She thought it was a bit much, having your name emblazoned on your own skyscraper, just in case no one has figured out it was yours yet. Clearly, having a sizeable ego was a prerequisite to becoming the kind of man who owned a skyscraper in the middle of New York.

"What do you think of it?" Natasha asked, picking at her croissant delicately.

"It's a bit flashy," Yan replied non-committedly and picked up her coffee to see if it had improved at all since the last disappointing sip. It hadn't.

"That's one way of putting it," the agent laughed. "Everything about Stark is a bit flashy. Built himself a robotic suit and painted it red and gold, it's just the way he is,"

"Seems foolish, ruins all camouflage capabilities when you look like tomatoes got into a fight with sunflowers and there was no clear winner,"

"If you have the iron man suit, you don't really need to worry about camouflage,"

"Hmph," Yan was unconvinced

They were sitting in a café in Manhattan in clear view of the newly built Stark tower. In her opinion, it had more customers than what the quality of the coffee merited, but apparently it was always popular due to the virtue of the occasional sighting of Iron man flying into the tower. It served their purpose relatively well, however, as it was at the intersection of two busy streets. Romanov had insisted that she test her observation skills in a more public arena than her usual missions. Yan considered this to be highly unnecessary as she had spent years learning how to blend in and take notice of people, but she knew it was basically an excuse for the higher-ups so that Coulson could fulfil his promise of taking her round the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

He was keen for her to experience culture and generally just to spend her time doing things other than killing on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s behalf, as it was supposedly an important part of her "integrating into society". She was not sure how much she agreed with this idea, but she was interested in art so she wasn't particularly concerned with questioning his motives.

"OK, back to work," Natasha said, finishing her croissant.

Yan had so far worked her way through a two pastries, a plate of fruit and several sandwiches and was currently considering embarking on an exploration of the soups on offer despite the below satisfactory quality, much to the consternation of the waitress who had to keep bringing her more food. She had been following the advice of Dr Madison and had found that the more she ate the hungrier she became as her body adjusted to the new balance of power. True to his theory she did indeed feel stronger and she had informed him of that when she'd reluctantly skulked back to his office a week after the Russia mission.

She'd decided she might as well find a doctor she could trust and thus took to visiting his office after every mission. This went down well with S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as it showed "growing responsibility", which was an added bonus. She had yet to tell them that she was mostly going because he had started stocking some excellent biscuits and also lent her books. He was an avid reader of 19th century literature and especially loved Leo Tolstoy. She was currently working her way through _Anna Karenina_ and was preparing to embark on the saga that was _War and Peace._

"Two metres behind you, young woman with a baby, no don't look," Romanov instructed. "Try and find out what she's saying,"

They were doing a training exercise wherein Yan had to use the gift of the tenth guardian to try to overhear people's phone conversations. She would use the energy signal of the devices to zone in on their voice.

"She's speaking Mandarin," She said, waiting for her earrings to translate it. "She's calling her sister to ask whether she should cook anything for Sunday, they're having lunch with her parents,"

"Good," Natasha said praising her. The exercise was fairly boring as she cared little for the affairs of random strangers, but she understood that it had practical applications in the field as being able to hack into the enemy's communications would be advantageous. However, she had had limited success as without direct contact the Saran only allowed her to detect energy fields and not manipulate them. For the most part she could only hear one side of the conversation.

Thankfully, at that moment Coulson arrived and thus she was saved from having to repeat the task.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading everyone! Do make my day and leave me a review!**


	18. Chapter 14

**Hey everyone,**

 **I'm so sorry about how long it's been since I last posted! The past couple of months have been totally hectic what with Uni application, ill health and the rest of life's issues. I must admit I then got a little sidetracked starting another story (Btw, feel free to check it out! It's a BTS cop!au that I'm posting on AO3 -** **/works/8594890/chapters/19710241** **) and totally forgot I'd stopped posting this. I hope you can forgive me! Thank you to everyone for sticking with this, especially when I go awoll!**

 **Anyway, warnings in this chapter for gory violence and language. I'm beginning to feel I might be verging into M territory with the levels of gore, so please let me know if you think I should change the rating. That's all for now,**

 **I hope you enjoy it :)**

* * *

Yan dropped out of the air vent and landed neatly on the desk, slowing her fall so that her touchdown was practically soundless. She had already set the cameras to play on loop, but in the night time gloom of the office she was completely invisible, having merged with the shadows. The glittering nightscape of Paris could be seen from the expansive windows, a reflection of the night's sky imprinted on steel and glass lining wide avenues. It was oddly quiet. Just the low thrum of the computer that was on standby, its amber light winking at her.

She used her powers to hack into the system and set a S.H.I.E.L.D. programme to work scanning for suspicious files so that she did not have to search the data base herself. Running one hand along the wall she skirted the parameters of the room and quickly discovered the distinctive energy signature of the safe. It was hidden behind a painting whose heavy frame suggested it was not frequently accessed. Summoning her armour for added strength she carefully lifted it up and laid it down on the floor. It took her a few minutes more to crack the complicated algorithms and open it.

Disappointingly, it was empty apart from a neat stack of bank notes and a couple of files. She took mental images of these and then transferred the data to the hard drive in her belt, before shutting the safe and returning the painting to its place. Conveniently, the S.H.I.E.L.D. programme chose that moment to finish running.

Her inspection of the office completed, she climbed back into the air vents to make her way down to the ground floor, leaving not one thing out of place except the dust. Travelling through the narrow confines of the vents was fairly uncomfortable but necessary, as despite the late hour many employees were still active in the building.

Yan was investigating the head office of the French firm that they had been the subject of the disastrous mission in Morocco. It was a solo mission, although in Yan's view it did not count as such as she had an entire support team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents nearby and the reassuring presence of Coulson in her ear. Currently the line was quiet as they were holding radio silence whilst she was inside the building to avoid detection, but to her surprise she found it comforting to know that he was there. She had grown accustomed to going on missions with at least one other agent by her side and, despite her normal preference for solitude and her dislike of most other people, she vaguely missed it. Perhaps because she was always in a more bellicose mood, and thus more willing to fight, when she had someone else to be irritated at.

She could not honestly say that she was feeling particularly inspired by the mission parameters. S.H.I.E.L.D. valued her most for her ability to manipulate energy sources and to hack into any device and, whilst she acknowledged it was indeed a useful skill, she was beginning to bore of endless surveillance.

Having finally wriggled her way to a lift shaft, she paused for a moment to stretch out her cramped limbs before flying to the bottom. Experience had told her that illicit goings on were always to be discovered underground, and the discrepancy between the official layout of the building and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s scans had confirmed this for her. Fortunately she did not meet the lift itself on the way down. _I'm spending too much time in lift shafts._

Despite her suspicions, Yan hadn't really been expecting to find much, and thus it was something of a shock when she emerged via another air vent into a vault-like room and discovered a vast mechanised production line. The company did specialise in the supply of chemicals for industrial use, but the actual production processes were supposed to take place in factories at a distance from residential areas due to the potentially hazardous nature of the business and the building she was in was supposedly only the corporate headquarters. _Well that certainly wasn't in the floor plans._

The static in her ear alerted her to the fact that the line had cut between her and the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, suggesting that something was jamming the comms. This did not concern her overly as she was sure she could handle herself without their assistance. Thankfully, there were enough shadows for her to remain sufficiently invisible to the few human workers that were overseeing the project. She managed to steal a vial of the strange reddish liquid that was being produced and packaged, storing it in her belt for later analysis. She noted with interest the way that people's gaze slid over her, their expressions momentarily glazed with confusion, as their brains detected the anomaly but failed to register it properly.

It had all the markings of a sophisticated drugs based operation, but to her knowledge this was not the company's area of expertise. It also seemed incongruous as S.H.I.E.L.D. was interested in them due to their possible ties to criminal organisations and involvement in illegal arms trading. She could not perceive a possible motive that would make such a risk viable, after all profit levels from the official side of the business were considerable.

The next few rooms were busier, taken up with laboratories were scientists were mixing various powders and solutions. There was an unsettling hush as if speaking was forbidden by some unspoken agreement. When Yan considered this, she realised that it was quite likely to be a solid rule and a sensible one at that. Prohibiting any communication would prevent information sharing, thus limiting the amount of damage that any one worker could do if their loyalty waned. The lights were brighter here and, although she was still fairly well camouflaged, she was aware that the chances of someone detecting her were growing.

Training and experimentation at S.H.I.E.L.D. had led her to discover that her powers distorted the light around her so that a faint blurry outline could be seen when she moved. The fewer shadows available for her to sink into, the more obvious this became. Natasha had actually become quite adept at spotting her, even in reasonably dim light, but she put this down to her knowing what to look for. Still, it was an obvious weakness that she had to remain cautious of, especially when on missions that required a high level of stealth.

It was when she came to a corridor lined with cell doors that she began to notice parallels to the bunker and to suspect that something more sinister than mere drug production was occurring. The cells were empty however, and discernible differences comforted her that this was not another branch of the hated Organisation.

Coming out into another high-ceilinged room, she found a group of people bustling about a man who was strapped down to a table. He had the slightly manic, glazed look that she had come to associate with those in possession of obsessive and probably inadvisable loyalty. Several others were seated on a balcony raised above the laboratory, watching events with thinly disguised scepticism. Some had military uniforms on and others had weapons at their sides. Deciding that whatever was about to occur was definitely something worthwhile hanging around to see, she positioned herself atop a set of cabinets where she wouldn't get in anyone's way.

"Tighten these restraints," ordered the man who was clearly in charge. His pristine lab coat indicated a lack of participation in actual work, which was always an obvious sign of authority.

"Gentlemen, welcome," This he addressed to those on the balcony. "You are about to witness a great step forward in the evolution of the modern soldier,"

 _Ah, so that's their game, super soldier creation. Calls it a step forward, as if it hasn't been done before a hundred times. Those others must be prospective customers, don't look very impressed, do they?_

"Let us begin,"

The soldier was injected with a dozen vials of the rust-coloured liquid and for some time nothing appeared to be happening, apart from the slightly gruesome spectacle of poisonous chemicals taking their toll on the human body. He writhed and bucked against the restraints and Yan was sure would be crying out in pain were it not for the gag that muffled his voice. The scientists looked uneasy, shifting about nervously and glancing every now and again to the men on the balcony as if to gauge how much trouble they would be in when it didn't work. The expressions of boredom and dissatisfaction suggested that it would not be good.

But then all of a sudden his body began to expand as the muscles swelled and bones thickened. Such rapid growth was unsustainable and his skin, stretched to breaking point, split apart tearing great rifts in his body with a noise disgustingly close to the sound of a predator shredding its prey. Against all odds there was little blood and the raw, exposed flesh continued to bulge outwards lined by hardened, scaly strips of skin. Offshoots of bone formed reptilian spikes and his nails became twisted claws to match his mad, beast-like eyes. The restraints snapped under the pressure and the monstrous thing lurched off the table, now that the process had finally ceased. He – if it could still have some sort of identity attached to it – now towered at least two feet above the rest, grunting incomprehensibly.

In short, it was a ghastly sight but the head scientist seemed pleased, as if it was all going to plan. If this was the case, Yan had some serious doubts about his sanity. He turned to the spectators, who were looking understandably shocked and slightly queasy, and began a tedious speech about the "endless possibilities" of the experiment. He got the soldier to demonstrate by lifting a thousand kilogram weight with such ease that it might as well have been a paper weight. It seemed he had perfect control over him, which she doubted was down to loyalty as the man had become a mindless beast.

She realised that she was starting to get out of her depth and that she could really do with some advice from Coulson. If it was possible to mass produce such super soldiers life was about to get a lot uglier than it already was, but she wasn't sure how to proceed. Retreat seemed sensible given that she had no backup and no plan, thus she hopped off the cabinet and made to exit the room.

In the next second Yan found herself literally pinned to the wall by a metal stake that curled into her flesh, fixing itself in place. The head scientist put down the weird staple-gun like weapon he had just snatched from the table next to him.

"It looks like we will be able to have a more practical demonstration of the soldier's capabilities," He smiled coldly. "An intruder, what a wonderful opportunity and perhaps I shall be able to salvage that camouflage tech you are using when he is through with you. It could do with some improvements,"

 _Fuck._ She cursed. _The bastard saw me._

(The explicit side of her vocabulary had been greatly enriched since she had started hanging around with Barton more and she had found that any bad situation could be marginally improved by a few angry words expressed with suitable force.)

Yan pulled herself from the wall just in time to avoid being flattened by a blow from the monster's clawed fist. It smashed into the plaster instead leaving a sizeable crater. At this point she realised she was no longer invisible, as the Saran diverted its resources to healing the gaping wound in her side. This was pointless as half the metal was still stuck in there having bitten into her hipbone.

The sudden appearance of a dishevelled, blood spattered girl caused mild consternation among the spectators and there were a few complaints about security, but for the most part they seemed sure she would soon be dealt with and that this would be welcome entertainment. They were also suitably impressed when her attempts to shoot the monster resulted in the bullets merely rebounding of its toughened hide. Again and again, she only just managed to leap out the way as the fist smacked down, leaving smears of crimson on the otherwise pristine floor. The laboratory was being wrecked of course, but this did not particularly matter as their long term investment in the project had paid off nicely.

For the moment, Yan's main advantage in the fight came from her boots which allowed her an inhuman speed that kept her out of reach of the monster, but her strength was starting to wane due to blood loss. Making a bold decision she abandoned all protocol and flew up to the balcony, hoping that it would give her enough respite to deal with her still open wound. This took the spectators by surprise and she used this narrow window to incapacitate several with a few well aimed blows. A few more were thrown over the side or used as a human shield for any weapons fired at her and only the last managed to get a shot in, hitting her in the leg.

The bullet went straight through and the wound closed up. She sunk to the ground and took cover behind an overturned table. Steeling herself, she vanished her gloves and slipped her hand into the wound, biting down on the cry that threatened to burst from her lips. Finding the sharp edge of the metal she grabbed hold of it and tugged with as much force as she could muster, refusing to release her grip until it broke free, even though the agonising pain made the edges of her vision flash white.

Gasping she dropped it and scrabbled at her belt with hands slick with blood to retrieve the vials of glucose solution and the battery she knew she urgently needed to fuel her recovery. The relief as the cool healing powers of the Saran flooded her system and closed up the wounds was indescribably good. She staggered to her feet, summoning the full force of her armour to gain the force she required, and punched through the wall to access the wires hidden behind. The influx of energy renewed the depleted reserves of her own body and filled her with renewed rage. She was ready for a fight.

This was good as it was at this moment that the soldier finally managed to scale the balcony and grab hold of her leg, throwing her back down. She twisted mid-air and reversed her direction of motion, flying up and landing a solid punch under his chin. He was knocked back by the force of the blow and a further kick to his chest threw him against the far wall.

The head scientist had belatedly realised that Yan was in fact a considerable threat and was attempting to use his staple gun to pin her down once again. But this time she caught sight of the cartwheeling shard of metal in time and dived sideways. It skimmed past her and wrapped round the arm of the monster fixing it to the wall. Recognising an opportunity, she snatched the gun from the scientist's hands having dealt a vicious kick to his chest, delighting in the discernible crunch as his ribs snapped.

Whipping round she fired off all the remaining rounds of ammo in order to pin the soldier down whilst he was still stunned by her previous attack. His incomprehensible roars and growls indicated that he would not be caged for long however as he was already beginning to tear the restraints loose.

"How do I turn him back?" she snarled at the scientist and began to carefully apply pressure to his chest with one boot, savouring his cries of pain that swiftly followed his first few arrogant refusals to speak.

"It's impossible!" he finally gasped but she did not let up, grinding her heel a little til she heard the grating of his ribs. "I don't know how, please!"

"Tell me how to control him!" she snapped.

"Y-You can't!" he laughed mirthlessly, coughing up blood flecked saliva as he desperately pushed against her leg. "There was a kill switch! And you destroyed it,"

"Fuck," Yan muttered, noticing the twisted strip of metal that had been wrapped around the scientist's forehead and had allowed him control over the beast. She let him go, deciding she had got all information of immediate relevance and that S.H.I.E.L.D. could deal with him later. One final satisfying kick tipped him over the edge of consciousness and she left him to deal with the more pressing issue at hand.

All other personnel and visitors had cleared out of the room and alarms were blaring. Clearly, there was no hope of it remaining a purely surveillance mission and thus the wisest thing would be to call in backup and let Coulson tell her what to do. The signal jamming her comms was still active but she didn't have time to spare searching for the source, thus the clear course of action was to get back to the surface as quickly as possible. This decision swiftly made, she flew back into the corridor back towards the lift shaft.

An almighty crash led her to glance back and see that the soldier had already escaped and was barrelling along the corridor after her, tearing great chunks out of the ceiling and walls as it was too narrow for him to fit. She had no choice but to carry on as in such tight confines there was no room for her to dodge his blows and it seemed he could inflict more damage than she could. A flash of inspiration led her to chuck a grenade from her belt in his direction and the ensuing blast caused the floor above to collapse and trap him in the rubble.

Flying up through the wreckage she found to her relief that she could reach her backup team, "Coulson!"

"Yan, what's happening? We couldn't reach you," his tone was urgent but calm, betraying no senses of panic.

"They were jamming the comms," She explained. "Found the base, some sort of drug operation. Main issue being the crazed super soldier now on the loose and coming after me,"

There was a slight pause on the other end of the line whilst the information was being processed, "We'll evacuate the area, try and keep him off the street,"

"Got it,"

This order turned out to be a waste of breath as at that moment the soldier burst up through the floor in a shower of rock, metal and crushed office equipment and swung a slab of concrete at her. She was thrown through the glass windows which shattered on impact and out into the street. Thankfully, it seemed the floor had been mostly deserted and thus no one was caught in either the earlier explosion or his re-emergence. The downside was that the fight had now moved onto a crowded street full of tourists and Parisians, who had unwisely chosen that night for an evening out.

The astonished screams and cries of horror brought her to her senses immediately and she launched herself back at the monster determined to push him back into the building. It was too late to keep the events of the mission out of the public sphere but she wasn't going to let anyone get hurt. S.H.I.E.L.D. could deal with a cover up but they wouldn't look too kindly on her causing civilian deaths. Now that he had been released from any form of control, it seemed his only focus was on destruction.

"Everyone get out of here! Quickly, run!" Yan yelled, the gift of the seventh guardian translating her words into French instantaneously. The sight of a cloaked figure waving guns and hovering a few metres above the ground was clearly enough impetus for people to follow her orders.

She dived and slammed into the soldier with all her might, her armour both protecting her body like an exoskeleton and increasing the force of her blow such that the effect was akin to a cannonball and he was thrown backwards. Even so the damage was limited and he hurled a nearby car at her. Though it would have been easier to merely dodge the missile, it was unfortunately still occupied and thus she was forced to catch it mid-air and absorb the force of the impact such that it did not crumple and crush them. Setting still considerably battered vehicle down, she tore the doors off and pulled the people out leaping into the air with one tucked under each arm just in time to avoid the second car that was thankfully empty.

She set them down at a safe distance and flew away again after struggling to extricate herself from the grip of the terrified woman. The car collision had blocked the road and the other drivers were abandoning their vehicles to flee on foot. Others were falling over each other in the terrified attempts to escape and she routinely had to scoop them up and fly them to safety out of the way of the rampaging beast or falling debris. Once or twice she even had to put herself in the path of his blows to protect those too shocked to move.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. jet appeared above and began to fire at him. The only effect of this was to make him angrier and it was swiftly brought down when a chuck of concrete struck one engine. It was enough of a destruction for Yan to leap onto his back and wrap a strip of the Saran around his neck. Although she was perfectly aware that this was foolish in the extreme as she was essentially tying herself to him – a fact that was helpfully pointed out by Wilson on the other end of the line – it nonetheless gave the jet enough respite to land safely. It also enabled her to forcefully steer the beast away from a group of restaurant goers who were trapped inside by debris.

Tuning out the wailing sirens of approaching police cars and the screams of bystanders, she tried to locate the implants she was sure were there. If she could use the gift of the tenth guardian to hack into the control system, she could shut him down for good. _Come on! Where are they?_ At the same time she was pulling the Saran tighter around the soldier's neck, using all her strength to try and crush his windpipe. But just as she detected the familiar buzz of electronics through the multiple layers of hardened flesh, he managed to tear her off and toss her across the street and through a shop window.

Dragging a long shard of glass out of her side so that the wound could close up, she ran back into the street. The beast had lost interest in her and was charging back towards the S.H.I.E.L.D. jet. She was about to chase after him when her attention was caught by the hiss of escaping gas emanating from an upturned cart of a street food vendor; a young girl was cowering behind it, oblivious to the danger she was in. Instinctively, Yan dived towards her and enveloped her in her cloak just as a single spark ignited the gas and a ball of fire exploded upwards.

She shielded the girl with her wrists, using the gift of the sixth guardian to divert the raging flames around them. The tremendous heat was still enough to scorch her exposed skin, but the girl was kept safe by the Saran. Pushing the blazing inferno away from them she got to her feet and carried the girl away, passing her into the arms of her grateful parents.

Then she called the fire to her and curled it around her fists, forming great balls of fire which she hurled at the beast one after the other. The first stopped him in his tracks. The second erupted against his back and took hold, searing the flesh. The third set him alight.

This time, when Yan wrapped her still burning arms around his neck, it took her mere seconds to locate the implants and send the order through. After one final convulsive shudder he stilled.

Extinguishing the flames with a decisive hand gesture, she rose up into the air to survey the wreckage, her cloak billowing dramatically out around her slim frame. She was a silhouette, her glowing outline lit up by the golden city lights and the fierce spotlights of the police helicopters that were circling above like carrion birds examining their prey. Sirens were still wailing plaintively, the vehicles a few blocks away. A wave of flashes and clicks drew her attention to the shocked groups of people huddling together in positions of shelter, too scared to move and yet able to hold aloft phones and cameras to capture the events. She had meant to turn away but the look on their pale, upturned faces held her gaze in a vice like grip. It was equal parts fear and shock intermingled with a tinge of something else she did not recognise – could not understand. Not just awe, something she would not have been shocked by, but admiration. Some of them were smiling, calling out to her, and the parents of the child she had rescued minutes earlier were crying with relief.

It was gratitude, this emotion that seemed so alien to her and it was not so much its presence that was shocking to her but the fact that a small part of her actually enjoyed it.

But she did not linger for long. Wrapping her cloak around herself, she vanished into the night.

* * *

 **That's it! Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow, favourite and review! I promise I'll try to update more regularly from now on.**


	19. Chapter 15

**Hey guys! Hope you're all having a nice weekend :) I'm using this as a good opportunity to procrastinate on doing my work *sighs***

 **Thank you for all the favourites and follows! This has honestly gone way beyond my expectations :)**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

"Ha! What a hero you've become!" Barton grinned waving the newspaper at her.

"I was clearing up a mess _I'd_ created! It was hardly an act of altruism," Yan snarled, grabbing it off him and throwing it aside so he would stop quoting bits of it at her.

"They've even given you a code name! That's a crucial step in becoming a superhero,"

"What!" she exclaimed snatching it up again to skim through the article. She had made the front page of quite a few publications both in France and internationally, though she noted that the details were suitably vague, courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D. obscuring as much as possible from the public. In fact, their role in the whole debacle had pretty much been entirely covered up. The sizeable vacuum as far as facts were concerned had resulted in most newspapers filling a lot of room with wild speculations and frankly implausible stories. It would have been quite amusing if it wasn't all about her. As it was, Barton was having a field day with the whole affair and thus she was incredibly irritated. At least the majority were taking a fairly positive view of her.

"They're calling you Nightmare, which has a fun ring to it. Personally I quite liked Spectre but it seems that one was less popular so Nightmare will probably stick,"

"Since when were you a PR expert?" she snapped. _Nightmare. Hmm, could be worse. "_ And why do they think I'm French?"

"You were speaking French," he shrugged. "It's a better reason than the story claiming you're a small town cow girl from West Texas because of your rodeo skills,"

"You've got to be kidding me!"

"No, I genuinely found an article claiming that,"

"Surely you have some actual work to do?"

"Plane flights are boring, I had to find _something_ to do. And what better activity that researching the new hero on the block," he smirked infuriatingly at her and then began exclaiming in a tone more suitable to the boxing ring, "The great! The astounding! Nightmare!"

If looks could kill – and knowing the Saran this was a distinct possibility for her – the agent would have crossed over to the other realm some time ago. However, seeing as Yan was currently in a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet surrounded by operatives – _and there's nowhere to hide the body –_ she had to make do with jabbing him in the ribs hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs so that he would shut up.

They were on their way to the Triskelion, the official headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Washington. It was a building that seemed to have been designed entirely for the purpose of grabbing everyone's attention by being huge, shiny and strangely shaped so that they'd pay less attention to the multitude of hidden bases in the rest of the world. Despite this obvious façade screaming of respectability and accountability and a staff heavily comprised of people who wouldn't know one end of a gun from the other, it was in fact a major base of operations. The ginormous underground basement full of fighter jets being the prime example.

In theory, she was going there simply for a meeting with Director Fury with the main subject apparently being the fact that she had reached some milestone in terms of trustworthiness. In reality she imagined it had a lot more to do with the botched mission in Paris. However, she was not feeling particularly worried at the prospect as most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had a laughably positive view of how it had all turned out. In her own opinion, it had been mildly successful, if her all too public battle with a raging supersoldier was discounted, since most of the perpetrators had been captured. The company itself was being charged with arms dealing and fraud, crimes which were acceptable for the public domain, and a large number of the executive board had been arrested and handed over to the French and American governments. Those more directly involved had been rounded up by S.H.I.E.L.D.

Yan was mildly puzzled by Coulson's excitement at the meeting and thus sensed that there was something else going on she didn't yet know of. She hadn't been able to quiz him on the matter as he had been away from her base since the Paris mission. She strongly suspected he was back in charge of the Tesseract but such information was far beyond her security clearance and she was trying not to spy too much on S.H.I.E.L.D. systems as it tended to annoy them. _Don't bite the hand that feeds you, as they say._

For that matter, she was pretty certain that Barton was headed there too, seeing as he and Coulson tended to end up on the same missions together. This was mildly disappointing as it meant that a significant majority of the people she could tolerate talking to – although Clint was currently reaching the limits of her patience – were going to be away for the foreseeable future, now that Natasha had left for an undercover mission in Russia. She could only hope that something interesting would happen soon, before the usual interminable boredom crept back in and she started breaking things.

As always, the minute she considered how bored she was, all hell let loose.

 _I really need to stop thinking that._ Yan leapt to her feet and seized control of the jet's engines just in time to flip it sideways and out of the path of the commercial plane, plummeting out of the sky, whose distress signals she had detected mere moments earlier. The S.H.I.E.L.D. jet was now careering sideways, sent out of control by her evasive manoeuvre. With a herculean effort she righted its course again and ceded control to the pilot. Thankfully, all the agents on board had been strapped in and so were held in place.

"Shit kid!" Barton cursed. "What the hell was that?"

"There's a plane coming down!" Yan explained, rushing to the back of the jet.

"I'm picking up the distress signal," the pilot called out and flicked a switch so that the panicked announcement could be heard.

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! American Airlines one four two, engine malfunction, requesting emergency landing! I repeat – " with a crackle of static the line was cut off.

"Open the cargo hatch!" Yan ordered.

"What are you doing?" Barton asked.

"It's going down fast, no way it's going to make a safe landing," she explained and then yelled to the pilot, "Hurry up!"

"Ok, you got this, go!"

Mildly relieved that no one was going to argue the point, she leapt out through the cargo hatch and dived towards the plane. They were still several thousand feet in the air, the city laid out beneath them, a glittering panorama threaded by the silver ribbon of the Potomac River. It was a bright day and the sun was reflecting off the myriad of glass plated buildings in an almost blinding array of light. The stricken plane was a dark blot against the shining metropolis, black smoke billowing from both its engines, pain being rent from its sides under the pressure as tumbled nose down.

 _Engine malfunction! That's the understatement of the century!_

Yan realised that there was no hope of her fixing the problem simply by forcing the system to work again. A better thought out plan was required, but the distance to the ground was shrinking rapidly and she certainly didn't have time to spare.

Summoning the full force of the Saran to her, she accelerated towards the plane as flames started to erupt from the engines. Drawing a dagger that instantly lengthened into a sword she swiped at the nearest wing and sliced it in two such that the engine separated from the main body just before it exploded. The plane tipped sideways and began to spiral due to its uneven weight. She was thrown away from it by the force of the explosion and was unable to reach the other engine before it too blew up, tearing off most of the wing with it. Thankfully, the rest of the plane remained relatively unscathed, although when she had been in contact she had discovered that the pressure levels were dropping rapidly.

Grabbing hold of the tail she tried to fly upwards and reduce the speed of the plane's descent, but only succeeded in tearing away a strip of metal. Determined, she got her feet in contact with the metal and began to sprint down to the nose, the gift of the eighth guardian ensuring she was not ripped away again by fierce wind. Finally reaching the end she catapulted over the nose, momentarily glimpsing the terrified and now shocked faces of the pilots, and landed an almighty kick to the underside of the plane.

The blow left a dent in the metal and flipped the carcass up such that it was now falling length ways and she had a larger surface area to work with. Focusing, she expanded the reach of the Saran until black tendrils had wrapped around the body of the plane a dozen times like the creeping coil of ivy around an ancient oak. And then she pushed up with all her strength, enveloping the vehicle in the power of the third guardian so that it too could fly again.

The roar of the wind was still ripping past her and it was only as they finally began to slow that it ceased to drown out the sound that Yan herself was making, the breath rent from her lips by the tremendous effort that she was exerting. They plummeted ever closer to the ground, but metre by metre their speed was decreasing until the metal stopped groaning from the pressure and her own ears were no longer filled by the pounding of rippling air.

By some miracle, they were coming down over the airport in front of the main terminal such that when her feet finally touched down on the tarmac she could see that people were already sprinting out to meet them. The full weight of the plane began to settle on her shoulders and her muscles were screaming their discontent as she was forced to her knees. Sinking to the ground she forced the system to let the wheels down and let it go. For a moment she feared they had been damaged and would collapse, but they supported its weight.

Yan lay flat on her back letting the Saran flow down the sides of the plane and crawl back to her. The ground had been pleasantly warmed by the sun and the heat was being gradually absorbed as she tried to recoup some of the energy she had expended in the rescue mission. She considered that it would probably be sensible to get out of sight swiftly before she was surrounded, but staring up at the cracked underside of the plane she found she lacked any motivation to move from her position. The emergency doors had already been forced open by the crew and the marigold yellow escape slides activated, rapidly inflating to allow fast evacuation of passengers.

A wailing siren announced the arrival of a fire engine although this was not entirely necessary as she had sucked all the remaining energy from the plane to prevent the possibility of sparks igniting the fuel. Two transport buses had also just pulled up to start carting people away to safety and airport officials were loading them up efficiently. Clutching belongings and huddling in small groups, they looked shell-shocked and bewildered staring in horror at the mutilated wreckage of the plane.

"Dear god!" the captain was the last to leave and had gone to stand with the rest of the crew who were talking in hushed whispers. "They've been completely torn away!"

"How did we land without wings?"

"That was one of the gentlest landing I've ever had the pleasure to experience,"

"It's a miracle!"

These last few comments elicited a frown from the captain and a shared glance with the co-pilot, "I wouldn't put it quite like that,"

Both had seen the true source of the safe landing and the captain was now scanning the skies with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun, looking for any sign of their rescuer.

"You saw something?"

"I'm not sure _what_ I saw, but I know it was something,"

Yan took the uneasiness in his tone as her cue to flee the scene and slowly peeled herself off the tarmac, flexing her strained joints as she did so. She had been hidden behind the wheels and the inflatable slides, but it was far too bright for her to use the gift of the fifth guardians to escape without being noticed. The good news was that the S.H.I.E.L.D. jet was coming in to land not far from the fire truck. Sighing at the inconvenience of the whole thing she cautiously walked out from the shadow of the plane and into full view.

A ripple of shocked gasps travelled through the crowd of onlookers as if through water as they turned their gaze away from the landing jet and back to her. More irritatingly the airport security guards, that were attempting to shepherd passengers away from the scene, drew guns and levelled them at her. She stopped and surveyed them crossly. _I'm going to be late if this charade continues._

"Place your weapons on the ground and put your hands above your head!" One called out.

 _Oh for fuck's sake._

Thankfully, her salvation arrived in the form of Clint Barton waving his S.H.I.E.L.D. badge and giving orders in an authoritative tone that hid the fact he had no idea what he was talking about.

"Guns down officers. S.H.I.E.L.D. will take it from here. First priority is evacuating the area. Hurry it along,"

They reluctantly began to comply, spurred on by the cries of recognition from the crowd.

"It's her!"

"Nightmare,"

"She saved us!"

Yan inwardly rolled her eyes and turned away, leaving Barton to deal with any issues. He was doing so fairly effectively and she considered it just compensation for his earlier teasing.

* * *

"Have you no concern for the classified nature of your employment?" Director Fury growled, pacing up and down his office in front of the glass panels that gave a rather impressive view of the city.

"The metaphorical cat is quite clearly already out of the bag on that one," Yan replied, holding his furious gaze with some determination, " _Sir,"_

If her intention was to avoid provoking him, then it was admittedly a mistake to answer quite so sarcastically a question that didn't actually require an answer. However, she was mildly intimidated by him and also feeling fairly irritable and thus was in no mood to be subservient. Bereft of her mask – he had insisted she return to more civilian clothing – she was falling back on old attack methods to hold her own.

"Making a mistake one time does not entitle you to repeat that mistake on every mission," he scowled at her and then copied her mocking enunciation, _"Agent,"_

"The plane was falling out of the sky, I could hardly have sat back and done nothing,"

"I seem to recall that it had two engines before you acted,"

"Yes, two engines that were about to explode. There was no way that could have ended in a safe landing,"

"Assuming I accept that your intervention was wholly necessary – "

"It was," She interjected, earning herself a disapproving glance.

"Do not interrupt me, agent," he warned. "Assuming I accept it was necessary, nonetheless your disregard for protocol in the matter is cause for concern,"

"There is protocol to cover such situations, sir?" she smiled falsely. "That seems a bit specific,"

"Let me enlighten you. You failed to seek permission for your actions or even notify any authority of your plans!"

"With respect, Sir, how exactly was I supposed to notify anyone? Time was limited; I readily admit I made my plan up as I went. I had intended to merely reboot the engines and leave it be, but upon seeing the extent of the damage I realised that was impossible. Also, Agent Barton was present and he more or less gave me the go ahead,"

Fury frowned, "Either way, you made little effort to conceal yourself. May I remind you a significant part of your value to S.H.I.E.L.D. lies in the fact that no one knows you exist,"

"As I said earlier, the cat was out of the bag,"

The Director did not reply but continued to pace for a few minutes before coming to a halt abruptly and returning to his desk, "Sit down agent,"

Yan complied, slightly confused and resenting the loss of height this produced. He dropped a bunch of files in front of her and leaning forward on the desk, levelling a sharp look at her.

"What are these?"

"Official reports on all the missions you have completed since joining S.H.I.E.L.D., your Psych Eval, medical reports, everything we have on you," he explained. "No doubt, you've probably looked at a lot of it already,"

She opened one at random and found a transcript of Barton's account of their mission to the Russian steel factory. One bit in particular caught her attention.

 _"_ _Yeah, she's kinda crazy and difficult to work with is an understatement. But I like the kid! Rather have her at my back than working on the other side, that's for sure."_

 _Gee thanks, Barton._ She thought sarcastically, letting the file fall shut again.

"I'm guessing you have a point to make. So do me a favour and go ahead and make it,"

To her surprise, Fury actually smiled, "Your disrespect for authority aside, your track record shows you're an asset worth having. I was sure of that _before_ you saved three hundred and sixty seven lives,"

"I can't help but feel that's not what you summoned me here to say," Yan was really confused at this turn of events.

"No,"

"Well?"

"I'd like to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative,"

 **And there we have it :) next chapter will be delayed for a few weeks as I'm gonna be out of the country. Thanks for reading!**


	20. Chapter 16

**Hi guys!**

 **Happy New Year! Fingers crossed 2017 turns out to be less of a train wreck!**

 **Warnings in this for gore, violence and language! This is so exciting, I'm finally on the events of the film! It's always difficult to get the right balance between using the plot and just writing out the entire thing without adding much of your own stuff, so I'd appreciate your views on how I'm doing. Constructive criticism is always welcome!**

 **Anyway, enjoy!**

 _What a fucking disaster!_ Yan thought bitterly as she put on another turn of speed, pushing at the limits of the Saran. She could see the base ahead, lit up by floodlights, a shining beacon in the middle of the desert. She had been following the road for miles as it wound through scrubland shrouded in darkness, with nothing beyond vague coordinates and a general direction to head in.

 _You'd think they'd abandon such levels of security when the place is about to get wiped out of existence, but no, nothing quite so sensible._

The call had come through from Coulson a couple of hours ago, "The Tesseract is playing up, get here as soon as you can,"

She hadn't even considered taking a jet, knowing she could go much faster, but the combination of the freezing night time temperatures and the nonstop acceleration was already taking its toll on her energy levels. All considered, it was a good thing she was being summoned for the reason that she was, she could definitely do with the pick me up of the Tesseract's power. She found herself lamenting the fact she hadn't listened to the guardians and taken the thing off S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hands two months ago.

As Yan drew level, she noticed a helicopter was coming into land at the same time. Touching down at the front of the main building she abandoned all semblance of grace, essentially falling out of the sky.

Coulson was waiting for her, "Yan, good timing, Director Fury is arriving now,"

"Fury? It's serious then,"

"Looks it, we're evacuating, but as you said who knows if there's a safe distance," he gave her a grim look. "Get inside, see what you can do,"

"Sir," she nodded and rushed in.

* * *

Yan had to agree that it looked bad.

The Tesseract was not the gently glowing cube she remembered but was now emitting ever greater waves of light and every now and then a shower of sparks. The white veins that cut through the crystal were flashing and the whole thing was pulsating angrily. She could hear the strained hum of the instruments that were attempting to restrain it. They might as well have been trying to hold back a tsunami with a sieve.

"Is there anything we know for certain?" Fury was talking to the scientist in charge, Dr Selvig. His underlings were scurrying around banks of computers like white-coated beetles, frowning worriedly at screens of measurements and trying to tune their instruments to compensate for the interference the prism was throwing off.

"The Tesseract is misbehaving,"

Although Yan still had her own doubts as to how alive or otherwise the infinity gem was, she wouldn't go so far as to make it sound like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.

"Is that supposed to be funny?" Fury seemed to share this opinion as his familiar ire was already beginning to show.

Picking her way over various cables and wires until she was directly in front of the Tesseract's containment device, she started to edge towards it. She could feel its energy field vibrating through her bones and a low hum was settling at the back of her mind playing its usual tricks on her self-control. She was beginning to wonder if she would do more harm than good by trying to control it.

"No, it's not funny at all. The Tesseract is not only active, she's…misbehaving." Selvig explained with a grim smile.

"How soon until you pull the plug?"

"She's an energy source. If we turn off the power, she turns it back on. If she reaches peak level…"

"Kraka-boom," Yan muttered to herself. Apparently she did not say this as quietly as she thought.

"More or less,"

Fury gave her a disapproving look, "Agent, can you control it?"

"The short answer is no," she replied. "I can start absorbing some of the excess but I have limits, the Tesseract doesn't,"

"We don't have any other harness," Selvig added. "Our calculations are far from complete. Now she's throwing off interference, radiation,"

 _She? It's an inanimate rock for heaven's sake._ Yan was fairly unimpressed at their complete lack of a plan. _So much for being a safe pair of hands, they've had this thing for years! Come on!_

Fury frowned clearly displeased, "Where's Agent Barton?"

"The Hawk? Up in his nest as usual,"

Yan looked up at the high vaulted ceiling and spotted Clint perched on some railings in the gloom, very much living up to his namesake. It was something of a relief to know he was there; nothing made light of a situation quite like his bad jokes. Right on cue he fired a grappling arrow at the ceiling and used his bow like a zip-wire to travel down rapidly. _Bloody ridiculous show-off._

"I gave you this detail so you could keep a close eye on things, agent," Fury reprimanded him

"Well I see better from a distance," Barton grinned, unfazed by his boss's displeasure. He flashed a wink at Yan, who merely rolled her eyes and continued to prod at the Tesseract's energy field.

"Doctor, it's spiking again," another scientist looked up from her screen.

The warning was unnecessary for Yan as she had felt the sudden jolt as the energy field expanded outwards, enveloping her. Instantaneously, her previous fatigue vanished as it flowed into her system against her will. But the power levels were still volatile, fluctuating wildly from one extreme to another. She tried to dampen the cycle, drawing off the excess with both hands pressed against the rapidly heating metal of the containment system, but she knew her efforts were barely making a difference.

"Are you seeing anything that might set this thing off?" Fury asked.

The energy surges were increasing in frequency; no longer washing over her as gentle surf but buffeting her full on like tempestuous, storm-tossed waves crashing down on a beach. A crescendo of feedback and the whine of machines reaching their limits was rising in her head as a fierce aching hum. It was rapidly approaching breaking point.

"No one's come or gone. Its oven is clean. No contacts, no I.M.'s. If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end," Barton reported.

She wanted to warn them but her mind was buzzing with frenzied static and the words would not come. Half formed syllables rolled to edge of her tongue but stuck fast just before her breath could lend force to the movements of her lips. The conversations of the people around her were becoming faint.

"At this end?"

The Tesseract was whispering to her, tugging at the corner of her mind as it dug its tendrils into her thoughts and crawled across her nervous system, shutting down any opposition to its treacherous suggestions. It spoke to her of far off places at the very boundaries of space, of an inky blackness pierced by tiny shards of light of distant stars, of strands of air clinging to barren rocks.

"Yeah, the cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right? The doors open from both sides,"

When Yan thought back on it later, examining her memories of the events to determine where exactly everything had gone quite so catastrophically wrong, she appreciated the truly dramatic timing of the Tesseract. Right on cue an energy beam erupted from its centre and sent her flying back a hundred yards to slam into the far wall. For a singular excruciating moment it pinned her there, burning straight through the Saran and searing the flesh of her stomach. It began to pool its force into a rapidly expanding circle of glowing blue energy. And then just as suddenly it collapsed, dissipating in great rolls of blue flame that licked up the sides of the cavernous room and gathered in a great writhing mass on the ceiling.

Yan slid down the wall to the floor as her legs buckled and refused to take her weight. She could hear her skin popping and sizzling as it continued to cook from the residual heat, feel the grinding of her bones from where her ribcage had been partly crushed, taste the metallic tang of blood in her mouth that was bubbling up her throat and dribbling down her chin under her mask. She idly considered how truly disgusting the experience was, feeling hysterically grateful for the healing powers of the Saran that were already knitting bones back together and rebuilding damaged organs. It was in fact rather a stroke of luck that her injuries had been dealt by the Tesseract, for the influx of energy was sufficient to fuel her recovery and was even enough to shut down her pain sensors momentarily so that she merely felt numb.

It was through this hazy cloud of faint pain and general numbness that she watched the unfolding events, more or less powerless to do anything. As the blue smoke cleared from the platform in front of her it revealed a man, who uncoiled himself from a crouch and drew himself up to his rather impressive height like a fern unfurling its leaves. As he took in his surroundings, his movements were hesitant and stilted, like those of a feral animal. In the gloom she could only just make out his outline that was faintly lit up by the glowing orb of his spear and the glint of metal from his armour that was reflecting its light.

Scrambled though her thoughts were, she was conscious enough to recognise the absurdity of this. _A fucking spear, really? And that helmet! What is he? A cow?_

S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were beginning to cautiously approach, guns drawn and levelled at the alien visitor. The more alert parts of her brain were urging them to back off, dragging up memories that did not belong to her but clearly proclaimed: Danger!

"Sir, please put down the spear!" Fury ordered.

This produced a pause as the man contemplated the weapon in his hands as if he had been previously unaware of its presence. And then he fired it at the director and Yan realised that whilst it was indeed spear shaped, it was by no means merely a mediaeval weapon and was in fact more like a sceptre, drawing all its power from the orb. Barton dived sideways and shoved Fury out of the path of the blast just in time and it hit a bank of computers behind them causing the already short-circuited machines to explode stunning them both.

The alien leapt forward with inhuman strength, just as the agents began to open fire, and landed in their midst impaling one as he did so. Yan could do nothing but watch as he dispatched them one after another with frightening efficiency, knives appearing in his hands and slicing through the air to slash and stab. Guards on the balcony above began shooting too but he merely swiped aside the bullets with a wave of his hand and a flash of green. The men were soon after dealt with by another blast from the spear.

Clint got to his feet having regained consciousness and turned to fight armed only with a gun as his bow lay discarded a few metres away, but before he could use it the alien had seized his wrist, twisting his arm.

It was at this moment that Yan finally managed to will her body into obeying her commands, spurred on by a jolt of worry for his safety, though if asked she would have denied any such feelings vehemently. She leapt up and began to sprint towards him but even with her speed she had no chance of getting there in time to prevent him from raising the sceptre to touch Barton's chest. For a ghastly moment she thought her friend would be impaled but the energy of the sceptre seemed to sink into his skin, flowing through his veins to pool in his eyes, filling them with an unnatural blue.

"You have heart," the alien said with a menacing grin that revealed shark like teeth. When he released his grip on Barton, he ceased all resistance and stood to attention.

Not quite understanding what she was seeing but having several horrible theories, she fired both her guns at him, knowing she had to take advantage of the fact that he was unaware of her presence whilst she still could. She had aimed at his heart but, turning to fix her with a disdainful glare, he shifted out of the path of her shot.

However, his arrogant belief in his own infallibility worked to her advantage as he didn't bother to fully evade her attack and the magical force-fields that had protected him from previous assaults failed to deflect the bullets. One tore straight through his shoulder, displacing a delicate arc of crimson blood.

 _At least he bleeds like any other man._ Yan thought maliciously, feeling disproportionately satisfied by the look of displeasure and shock on his face. Crossing the distance between them before he could swing the sceptre round to block her, she landing a punch to his jaw that knocked him off his feet. He was not down for long though and once she lacked the element of surprise she quickly found herself on the back foot, narrowly avoiding a volley of decidedly sharp missiles. Adapting to close quarter fighting, she changed her guns to swords and summoned the full force of her armour which had retreated when she was healing. Every now and again she would land a kick or successful slip her blades past his defences, but dispiritingly not one of the injuries she inflicted seemed to have any effect on him beyond further enflaming his anger. Clearly he had not been expecting much resistance and her every move elicited furious snarls of indignation and impatience.

He was without a doubt the fiercest opponent she had ever faced and she was most definitely not at full strength, thus it was something of a challenge to hold her own against him. She knew that it was important to stall him for as long as possible to give the others time to escape, especially the scientists who had no fighting ability and were currently cowering behind sparking machinery. Most importantly she had to prevent him getting his hands on the Tesseract.

 _Seeing how much damage it can do left to its own devices, it needs to be locked up sooner rather than later. And I doubt this crazed maniac has the benefit of mankind as his main priority._

But all her good intentions were to come to naught for it was at that moment that he finally caught her with a blast from his sceptre and she was thrown back against a bank of computers. She realised that she had to change her tactics if she was to gain the upper hand, even if it meant revealing more of her abilities than she would wish, and thus began to summon the powers of the fifth guardians intending to transform into a wolf. But to her shock the Saran was not responding.

Her gaze fell and she realised she was pinned down, an arrow impaling her chest and each arm. She gradually became aware of the torturous agony that was spreading outwards from each wound, putting down roots that dug into her bones, sprouting stems that writhed through her flesh and pierced her skin with thorns, budding flowers that unfurled in her breast. Her worst fears were confirmed.

"For fuck's sake, Clint! Snap out of it!" Yan gasped, struggling to breathe around the hole in her lung. Her desperate words had no effect.

Gritting her teeth she began to slide on arm up the shaft of the arrow, fighting against waves of nausea to free herself. There was an almost indiscernible click and the arrows in her arms exploded. When the smoke and flames cleared away she was left with bloodied stumps.

Blackest night engulfed her, coming down over her eyes as she slipped into blissful unconsciousness.

* * *

Yan forced herself awake, breaking away from the bonds of sleep that gripped her weak limbs. She struggled against the darkness and focused on the muddled snippets of conversation that were reaching her, trying to use the words as an anchor to drag herself back to the land of the living. Each time she came close to opening her eyes, her mind would recoil from the pain that awaited her and would creep back until her determination would drive her forward again.

" – ve to get any messier,"

Finally she resurfaced, bursting through the membrane of consciousness as if emerging from underwater. Still not able to command her body to move she listened to the voices, identifying the first as Fury, his tone clearly stating a warning. She could no longer hear the hum of the Tesseract and she realised it had been moved, cloaked somehow.

"Of course it does," this was the alien, laughing mirthlessly, "I've come too far for anything else. I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose,"

 _What a pompous ass!_ She thought vaguely and decided that it wasn't just her addled brain that made that statement incomprehensible. The name was familiar but she could not remember where she had heard it before. S.H.I.E.L.D. files? Something she had read?

"Loki? Brother of Thor?" Selvig, fearful recognition plain in his voice. This rung another bell. In fact flashes of memory had been rushing through her mind ever since he had first appeared, ringing enough bells for a whole church service.

 **"** We have no quarrel with your people," Fury again, starting to sound angry.

"An ant has no quarrel with a boot,"

She felt that this was not a valid point.

"You planning to step on us?"

 _I am truly starting to appreciate his sense of humour._

Yan felt her eyes flit open, finally obeying her commands, and she took in the scene. Fury was standing to one side, tightly gripped a metal case she was sure contained the Tesseract, Loki was facing him, a crowd of brain washed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and scientists at his back. It seemed that only Selvig was still in control of himself. With a jolt she remembered the horrifying state of her arms and looked down to find her hands still missing.

However, the pain had become manageable and she noticed that the Saran was bubbling at the edge of the burned stumps, dripping down into long strands. Before her very eyes they began to twist and plait together, hardening into delicate scale-like plates that multiplied until they formed partially hollow, honeycomb casts of her hands. She became aware of the feeling of energy flowing through her veins and realised she was absorbing electricity from the machines at her back to fuel the process. Tentatively she wiggled her new fingers and was delighted that they responded to her mental commands. Relieved that she was not to be permanently disfigured, she returned her focus to the conversation at hand.

"I come with glad tidings, of a world made free,"

 _God! The maniac continues with his crazy ramblings. No surer sign of insanity than a monologue._

 _"_ Free from what?"

"Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart…" he turned suddenly to touch the sceptre to Selvig's chest, "You will know peace,"

 _Really has a flare for the dramatic, this one._ This last thought was enough to bring forth the last slivers of memory required to fit together all the pieces. She remembered reading a book on Norse mythology, the offhand remark that Coulson had made about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s "Norse friend" that had spurred her on to hack into a level ten file in a very bored moment and, of course, the file itself. Before the Saran, she would have considered a report on demi-god aliens straight out of the legends coming to earth and flattening towns to be a completely ridiculous work of fiction. The version she had been able to access had been heavily redacted and at the time she had been unwilling to push her luck any further and so had quickly forgotten about it. Thus, unfortunately, she had learnt nothing of value that might have helped her now.

 **"** Yeah, you say peace, I kind of think you mean the other thing," Fury muttered.

"Sir, Director Fury is stalling," Barton announced. The complete lack of humour in his tone was unsettling; even when the situation required him to be at his most serious, he was never far from a little levity if required. His expression was eerily blank too as if he had been diminished to a mere puppet. It made her irrationally angry. "This place is about to blow. Drop a hundred feet of raw material. He means to bury us,"

"He's right, the portal is collapsing in on itself," Selvig confirmed. "You got maybe two minutes before this goes critical,"

"Well then," Loki said looking at Barton and without hesitation he immediately put a bullet in Fury's chest, as if he had known exactly what the alien had wanted without even having to ask.

 _Oh fuck!_ Yan thought when she saw the man drop. She knew she had to get out and warn the others, Coulson was probably still organising the evacuation and she had seen Maria Hill, the deputy director, on her way in. If the director had just been taken out, S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to need its best officers if it had a hope of dealing with the rapidly worsening threat. Despite the urgency of the situation her body simply would not move, her energy reserves were dangerously low and the Saran was channelling everything she had towards regrowing her hands and its futile attempts to heal the wound in her chest. She could only watch as Loki and his new entourage of brainwashed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents marched out of the room.

To her relief, a few moments later Fury dragged himself up, extracting the bullet from where it had embedded itself in his Kevlar vest with some difficulty.

"Hill! Do you copy!" he barked at a walkie-talkie. "Barton is – " Before he could finish the sound of gunfire came through and then the signal cut out into static. He hurried over to Yan and removed the arrow that was trapping her in a far from gentle fashion.

"Can you walk?" he asked brusquely as she struggled to overcome the coughing fit that was currently gripping her.

"In a minute…probably," she wheezed, fetching the batteries and glucose from her belt for a much needed boost.

"Well, you don't have a minute, so get it together now!" Fury ordered, taking hold of her arm and slinging it over his shoulder to half carry, half drag her from the lab. The writhing mass of energy in the ceiling was beginning to reach a breaking point, tearing off wall panels and sucking up loose machinery with its inescapable, gravitational pull. In fact, the whole building was now shaking as if beset by an earthquake. The ground was rolling and buckling and giant cracks were spreading up the walls as they began to crumble under the tremendous pressure.

"Hill! He has the Tesseract, track it down!" another order over the walkie-talkie.

Dodging falling masonry they emerged at the ground level to find Coulson and a few other agents attempting to leave with several heavy, silver cases full of files. A sudden wave of shaking sent them tumbling down the stairs, bursting open and spilling their contents like confetti.

"No! Leave it!" Coulson ordered as they scrambled to gather them back up again.

"Coulson, take charge of her," Fury yelled over the rumble of the collapsing building, more or less throwing Yan at him before sprinting off in another direction.

 _Charming! I feel like a rag doll._ She thought crossly. Nonetheless she was pleased that it was Coulson, there was no one else around she trusted to take care of her in her enfeebled and vulnerable state.

"You ok?" he asked, supporting her as she stumbled along towards the S.H.I.E.L.D. jet that was awaiting them.

"Honestly never been worse," She groaned.

"We'll be out of here soon enough," he reassured her.

Most available space on the jet was taken up by stacks of crates, but they just about squeezed in the few agents unlucky enough to still be in the area. Yan collapsed on a seat and struggled to strap herself in, fumbling the catch with her sluggish fake hands. She began to absorb as much of the plane's energy as she could feasibly do so without preventing it from taking off. As it turned off, it did so just in time, for they were no more than a few metres up when there was a terrific boom and the ground imploded, creating a crater a mile wide.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review! It makes my day, I tell you :D**


	21. Chapter 17

**Hey everyone,**

 **Agh it's been a terrible week! I've had mocks that went rather terribly and I got rejected from the uni I really wanted to, basically because I didn't get the A* I needed in maths a level, when I took it early, last year because of an at the time undiagnosed illness which really sucks. Ugh, anyway, so much for 2017 being a bit better.**

 **I hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks to everyone who's followed, favourited and reviewed so far! It honestly m** **akes me really happy :)**

* * *

"I'm fine, doctor, there is no need to fuss," Yan snapped at the man around a mouthful of food.

"I really would be more comfortable if you let me x-ray your chest to check your lungs are clear of any foreign objects," Maddison persisted, frowning worriedly at her.

"It's not necessary, I'm fully healed,"

"I sense I have no hope of convincing you to stay in for a few more tests,"

"Absolutely zero chance,"

"Alright," he sighed. "You're free to go –"

"Great," she made to get up, pushing aside her plate.

"Let me finish!" he admonished her. "I was going to say, you're free to go as soon as you finish eating that. And you must come back the minute you feel anything is wrong. I mean it!"

"Message received," she grinned at his exasperated expression, deciding it was no great hardship to eat a bit more.

"For god's sake, try and take it easy for a while. You've had enough usually fatal injuries in the past few months to wipe out a whole village. Just because you can heal fast, doesn't mean you're invincible,"

"We're kinda in the middle of a war here, in case you haven't noticed," Yan pointed out, reverting to sarcasm to avoid having to deal with how uncomfortable such a show of emotion was making her feel.

He merely frowned in a disapproving fashion and turned back to his notes muttering crossly, "You're going to make me go grey early,"

"You shouldn't worry about me, I can take care of myself," She added, trying to convince herself as much as him. Her stunning defeat at the hands of Barton (whom she had only just cautiously started to consider as a friend) had humiliated her. She felt weak and she hated it. Maddison's excessive display of concern for her wellbeing went far beyond what was required for his profession, in her view, and was only worsening the situation.

If he noticed the resentful tone of her voice, he made no mention of it, and in fact did not even look up from his screen, simply stating, "It's my job to worry,"

She gave up on pressing the point home, knowing all too well that he was now too distracted by his work to be giving his full attention to what she was saying. She had in the past managed to conduct whole conversations with him, only receiving monosyllabic answers, before realising he had no idea what she was saying and was firmly engrossed in something else. He was, at least, a good doctor even if he made her feel uneasy sometimes and tended to lose his train of thought a lot. His theories on her healing mechanisms had mostly turned out to be correct and had undoubtedly saved her life a couple of times.

She was currently sitting in his makeshift office at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base closest to the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. facilities that had been housing the Tesseract and had now been reduced to an impressive pile of rubble. After their last minute escape she had been transported here and Maddison had been hastily brought in to deal with her injuries, which were fairly extensive. Ten hours of induced coma later, she had awoken feeling marginally refreshed having spent the time hooked up to the emergency generator they had designed to deal with such situations. To her relief and Dr Maddison's great scientific interest, the armoured shell that had replaced her hands cracked open to reveal that her most useful appendages had been completely regrown. The skin was pink and shiny like that found under a freshly removed scab and the delicate curls of her tattoos had returned.

Yan had only a little time to consume a few thousand calories before she was rushed back to the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. base to help with the rescue effort. When it had collapsed, about a hundred people had been trapped underground in the many basements and tunnels, most of whom would have been stuck for days without the added efficiency her enhanced strength brought to the operation. Digging through tonnes of earth and rock to reach tiny pockets of air was hard work and she was exhausted by the time the last person had been accounted for. Often she had had to squeeze through gaps that were barely the width of her body, crawling down into the darkness with only the muffled sound of cries for help to guide her. Once or twice she had had to transform into a raven to get through to someone before using S.H.I.E.L.D.'s various impressive power tools to cut her way through metal and rock to pull them to safety, where it was too risky to do so from the surface.

Still, it had been fairly rewarding in a way and had certainly helped to take her mind off the danger the next few days could hold. All the same it was good to be able to rest again, and get a few more hot meals in before the next challenge presented itself. She was waiting on a call from Coulson to signal that she was needed on the helicarrier, which was the beast of an aircraft carrier that many dubbed Fury's floating headquarters. It was a half ship half plane monstrosity that had enough firepower to eliminate a city. Most impressively, its camouflage capabilities were such that it could turn invisible. Needless to say, she had been fairly impressed when she had first learnt of it.

For the time being, however, she had free time on her hands so she decided it would be sensible to consult the Saran on the subject of Asgard and its decidedly hostile inhabitants. Finishing her plate, she leant back against the cushions she had been propping herself up with and wrapped the wire from the generator around her arm so that she would continue to replenish her energy levels.

 _For every word that fills the silence, open the seventh gate. For Ca'lun the shapeshifter and for silence._

* * *

 **Greetings Lady Yan** , Ca'lun received her with a smile, **what information do you require today?**

 _I need everything you have on Asgard, specifically on Loki._

 **Ah! You're in luck. As it happens, a few hundred years back the Saran had a host from Vanaheim, which is another of the nine realms and closely linked to Asgard. Asgardians have lifespans of about five thousand years and thus Asgeir Finnurson, our host, was around at the same time as Loki and his brother Thor were reaching adolescence. I have nothing directly relating to them since but it should be of some aid to you.**

 _Thank you, Lady Ca'lun_ , Yan accepted the book that the goddess was proffering her.

When she opened it the usual barrage of memories flooded into her mind instantaneously. She learnt of Asgeir's humble upbringing as the son of a merchant and how he stumbled across the Saran in the store room of a visiting spaceship that had picked it up as a stowaway from the Andromeda galaxy. Injuries caused by an accidental explosion had been enough for it to react to him. After being accepted as its host he reinvented himself and rose to prominence amongst the fighting elite of Asgard by singlehandedly ending a few key battles and boasting of his great victories that were in fact mostly minor skirmishes. It seemed that the Saran was better known in the rest of the nine realms, having entered folk lore after previous encounters a few thousand years before, and after seeing the potential benefit of having Asgeir fighting on their side the Asgardians were quick to accept him. However, the man grew arrogant and reckless and met his rather untimely end only a hundred years after first gaining his new powers.

More importantly, he had become part of the inner circle of the rather spoilt crown prince, Thor, whose penchant for violence and rushing head long into battle matched his portrayal as a god of war. This meant that she had access to memories containing Loki, Thor's much maligned and frankly overshadowed brother, enabling her to learn highly useful information about his fighting technique. It seemed he was a magic user, a pretty rare occurrence among Asgardians who looked down on it as a rather unmanly pursuit. Asgeir himself frequently neglected to use the more fantastical side of his powers for fear of seeming out of place amongst the Asgardians he desperately wished to emulate and whom valued brute strength above all else. This behaviour was a key part in his downfall but was an advantage for her as it meant that Loki was not aware of all her capabilities.

Yan suspected that much of his desire for world domination surely stemmed from his childhood of being side lined and over looked.

 _If this whole thing is about sibling rivalry I will be so bloody unimpressed_. She thought bitterly.

 **I have many more books for you to read on Asgard's history, culture and relationships with the rest of the nine realms, as well as the little we know about magic of the sort that Loki uses. They may not prove to be directly useful for you in this case, but if you would appreciate some background information I can provide it.** Ca'lun offered.

She had found that her return visits to the inside worlds of the Saran did not seem to operate on the same timescale as reality and so knew that she had time to spare and it would be sensible to gather as much information as she could. Thus she devoured everything the goddess produced for her.

* * *

"I gotta say, it's an honour to meet you, officially," Coulson grinned.

 _Oh god, he's gone full fan boy,_ Yan rolled her eyes trying not to audibly sigh as she watched her unusually excited boss practically bouncing on his heels. His overjoyed behaviour was really no surprise seeing as their new passenger was none other than Steve Rogers A.K.A Captain America A.K.A Coulson's childhood hero.

"I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping" he continued awkwardly.

 _And it gets worse._

The captain was looking slightly bemused but was still smiling politely, showing much greater patience than Yan could ever muster. She supposed he was used to it by now.

"I mean, I was…I was present while you were unconscious from the ice. You know, it's really, it's just a…just a huge honour to have you on board," Coulson finished.

"Well, I hope I'm the man for the job," Rogers replied.

He was not at all what she had been expecting – apart from the tall, blond and muscle-bound part of course – there was no sign of obsessive patriotism bordering on chauvinism or arrogant confidence or a heightened sense of superiority. Instead he was modest to the point of mild embarrassment at other people's hero worshipping, reserved and quietly confident in a way that was neither offensive nor annoyingly pathetic, and endlessly, patiently polite. There was slight uneasiness in the way he held himself, as if he was unused to being in his own body, though it was probably something to do with having spent ninety years frozen in a block of ice. In fact, from what she had seen so far it seemed he would quite possibly make it to the highly select list of people she could actually tolerate for extended periods of time.

"Oh, you are. Absolutely." Coulson exclaimed nodding enthusiastically. The awkward silence dragged on for a few moments longer. "Uh…we've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input,"

The image of Coulson happily pouring over costume designs was truly quite bizarre and she had to stifle her snort of laughter so as not to undermine him.

"The uniform? Aren't the stars and stripes a little…old fashioned?" Rogers questioned.

"Everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned," Coulson reassured him.

Feeling the need to save her superior from his increasingly weird forays into the less than professional territory of hero worship, Yan moved from her seat next to pilot to join them in the back of the jet. When they had swung by New York to pick up the Captain she had not made any attempt at pleasantries, mainly due to her entirely false assumptions about his character, and thus had remained unnoticed. She preferred to observe people first so as to ascertain whether they were a threat or frankly just irrelevant, and to his credit Coulson tended to respect that.

Or it could simply have been that he was too distracted in his excitement.

"Is Agent Romanov joining us, sir?" she asked as a reasonable explanation for her sudden appearance. She had actually been wondering about that. If Natasha knew that Barton had been, well, kidnapped was probably the most accurate word, she would be back in a flash and heads would be rolling soon enough. Their relationship seemed to go far beyond the professional bonds of partnership, which made sense seeing as Clint was the one to recruit her from the KGB. When asked about it he had muttered something about Budapest and she hadn't been able to get anything else out of him.

"She's on route to the helicarrier, should arrive just before we do," Coulson replied. She nodded her acknowledgement and sat down, pulling her legs up underneath her to balance cross-legged on the bench. Normally she'd remain standing to try and reduce the height differential, but there was no point with Rogers around, she'd practically have to fly to get anywhere near to him and that would be impractical. The man in question was currently looking at her with a slightly scandalised look on his face, which she felt was uncalled for, though she wasn't sure of the cause.

"Captain?" she queried, one eyebrow raised to indicate she had noticed his staring.

 _Dear lord, he actually blushed and all I did was speak! He may be from the forties but this is too much!_

"You seem a little young to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, ma'am," He asked, looking suitably chastened.

 _Ah, so that's it._ She was not wearing her mask and thus her youth was rather apparent. She was quite relieved that this was the source of his discomfort, a moralistic disapproval of S.H.I.E.L.D. hiring minors, instead of some sort of objection to her personally, but it was also amusing. As was being called ma'am.

"I didn't really give them a choice in the matter," She grinned, feeling she should make some effort to defend her employers.

"Agent Nightmare is a special case," Coulson interjected. Since the events in Paris, Nightmare had more or less become her nom de guerre, which was less irritating than she had first thought because it meant people stopped using her first name as much.

"In other words I'm weird,"

"Enhanced,"

Realisation dawned on his face and he seemed to appraise her again equipped with this new information. Yan had noticed earlier that he had watching footage of the Hulk tearing up some army base and had correctly surmised that he had been given the same material as she had upon induction to the much vaunted Avengers Initiative. This was one of Fury's insanely ambitious and frankly pessimistic projects that aimed to gather up all the various enhanced and over skilled people like her and the Captain into a super powered crime fighting team intended to deal with Level 7 occurrences.

She had first learnt of it when Fury had officially decided to make her a member after her tussle with the American Airlines plane, and had been fairly unimpressed. Though she did not voice her opinions of the matter, she felt it was a ludicrous and frankly a bit gimmicky, and had been especially sceptical of the inclusion of the Hulk. He was a truly unfortunate – or foolish depending on how you looked at it – scientist who had managed to transform himself in an uncontrollable monster in an attempt to recreate Rogers' super soldier serum. As it happened, the idea was shelved due to limited support from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s higher ups, the World Security Council, but clearly Fury had managed to force it through after Loki the megalomaniac alien had burst onto the scene.

What this all amounted to was that Rogers' had no doubt at some point read S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files on her and probably watched the footage of her fight in Paris. The only reason he had not yet recognised her was that the Saran was arranged in a fairly non-descript manner, such that she appeared to be wearing black jeans, a crop top and her usual high heeled boots. Of course she still had her guns in their holsters, her energy manipulating fingerless gloves, the gift of the ninth guardian around her neck and her ever useful belt. The first three were for safety – though she could summon the gifts in seconds it paid to always be ready for a fight – and the last was just practical.

"You really can control electricity?" He asked incredulously. As usual this was the power that seemed to interest people most, even someone from the decidedly low tech forties.

"Yep, could take out this plane with a thought if I wanted to," She grinned, "Do you really only fight with a Frisbee?"

He seemed surprised and she momentarily wondered if she'd gone too far – _Who knows? Maybe the guy is really attached to his Frisbee_ – but then he laughed good-naturedly and nodded.

"Yes, ma'am, you could call it that,"

 _Ha! Coulson looks scandalised!_

"Yan will do fine, Captain" She corrected, starting to worry she might actually laugh if he continued addressing her as ma'am, which would probably be considered rude.

"Then please call me Steve,"

The rest of the flight passed in relative silence apart from various conversations that inevitably involved Steve looking confused and Coulson being a tad too obsessive. When the jet finally landed on the Helicarrier, the monstrous ship was in the process of preparing for take-off. Agents were scurrying over the surface like ants, fastening down jets and adjusting vents; it was quite a lengthy process. Romanov was waiting for them, dressed in surprisingly more casual attire than usual, suggesting she too had only just arrived.

"Agent Romanov, Captain Rogers," Coulson introduced them before hurrying on ahead to the bridge, apparently required to speak to the World Security Council or, as Natasha put it "face time".

"Agent Nightmare," she greeted her with a raised eyebrow and Yan nodded in acknowledgement, rolling her eyes at her teasing.

 _Goddamn it Hawkeye, no one's ever gonna let this go,_ she thought bitterly and then, remembering that she wouldn't be able to berate him for it, felt a renewed sense of anger.

"There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice. I thought Coulson was gonna swoon," The red head laughed, "Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

"Trading cards?"

"They're vintage, he's very proud," Yan interjected smirking, feeling she could reasonably make fun of her superior when he wasn't around. At that moment, they pretty much walked into a man whom she instantly recognised as the human form of the Hulk. He had been brought to the Helicarrier due to his speciality in Gamma radiation, which was apparently relevant to finding the Tesseract.

She had originally considered his presence to be an unviable threat – surely he's not the only radiation expert in the world? – but upon actually meeting the man she found it very hard to imagine that he was constantly on the verge of becoming a green rage monster. For a start, he was fairly short and was sleight of build, a fact that was accentuated by the way he held himself, his shoulders slumped in a defeated manner like he was trying to curl in on himself and occupy even less space. In fact he had a fairly nervous and jittery air, overlaid with an extreme exhaustion that was frankly revealing of how stressed he was. Her initial view that he was a bit of an idiot and entirely to blame for his condition, partly stemming from her instinctive anti-scientist view point, was beginning to soften. If she was the sort to feel pity, she might even have described it as that.

Either way, she knew she would be able to hold her own against him or at least escape easily if it came to that, and so she was no longer particularly concerned.

"Dr Banner," Steve greeted him, offering a hand which he hesitantly shook.

Yan watched from a short distance, reverting to her usual tactic of observation first, interaction later. Natasha had suddenly received an important call and was speaking in hurried tones, which she wisely elected not to try and eavesdrop on. From her previous attempts she had learnt rather swiftly that her S.O. was never impressed by her hacking her communications to find things out before she was allowed to know them.

"Oh, yeah. Hi. They told me you'd be coming," he replied awkwardly, still glancing around with a worried frown.

"Word is you can find the cube,"

"Is that the only word on me?" he asked with a self-deprecating laugh.

"Only word I care about," Steve was a rather tactful man, he had a direct manner which made people instantly more willing to listen to what he had to say. Banner certainly seemed to appreciate the sentiment as he smiled and began to visibly relax a little.

Recalling what she had read in his file of his clashes with the military and other more shady government organisations, Yan realised that his position was more or less exactly what she had worried hers might become. No doubt he was not the sort of man to seek out trouble and unlike her would probably prefer to be as normal and powerless as possible, and yet when people saw him as threat and attacked him he became one. It was essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy that he had pretty limited control over.

"Must be strange for you, all of this," he gestured expansively at the militaristic operations going on around them.

"Well, this is actually kind of familiar," Steve smiled.

"Gentlemen, you may want to step inside in a minute," Natasha interrupted, her phone call finished. "It's gonna get a little hard to breath,"

As she spoke the Helicarrier began to shake and rumble, great mechanical growls emanating from its bowels as it began to launch itself into the air. Moving closer to the edge revealed the sight of the sea churning as the engines roared into life, sending colossal tidal waves in every direction and creating four whirlpools as the tremendous suction dragged the water down.

"Is this is a submarine?" Steve asked, already impressed when he didn't even know the half of it.

"Really? They wanted me in a submerged pressurized metal container?" Banner's tone was somewhere in between amused and terrified.

"Other direction," Yan corrected him.

"Oh, no. This is much worse," he sighed.

* * *

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	22. Chapter 18

**Hi everyone!**

 **Another fortnight, another chapter :) Warnings in this one for swearing.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Dr Banner had proved his worth rather swiftly, and Yan had soon decided that he should be added to the list of tolerable scientists (bringing it to a grand total of three, if Maddison could be counted as a scientist that is). She had not understood a word of his instructions to the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents tasked with programming satellites to locate Loki, something about spectrometers and algorithms, but it had been effective. He was found less than an hour after the Helicarrier had first made its impressive transition to the air and, even more impressively, vanished from sight courtesy of its new reflective panelling system. Apparently it was partly based on Dr Yasin's findings from her experiments with the Saran's camouflaging ability, a fact which slightly worried her as she had not thought anything so useful had come out of them. However, these days she was feeling more relaxed about her position at S.H.I.E.L.D. and so soon forgot about it.

She was now back on a quinjet headed for Stuttgart, Germany with Natasha and the good Captain. As Banner was around in a purely professional capacity he was not coming with them and had in fact retreated to his lab as soon as possible, seeming a little relieved to be able to get out of the spotlight. Steve was looking ridiculous, kitted out in what was essentially a spandex flag that didn't even seem to be a reasonable defence against a blade let alone a bullet.

 _Coulson wasn't being very practical with his "design input", let's hope that shield is a little more effective._

Yan was a little suspicious as to what the hell Loki was doing in at a Gala night, especially as he appeared to be alone according to all the reports that had come in so far. He struck her as a bit of a drama queen so she wouldn't be surprised if it was just an excuse to rampage a bit and announce his world domination plans in style. Then again it would make a perfect distraction for whatever his brainwashed troops were up to and they could be going to completely the wrong place but it was the only lead they had.

 _Maybe he just really likes a party._

"You've fought him already," Steve remarked.

"Yeah,"

"What's he like?"

"Deranged, megalomaniac, pretty overconfident," she listed and then added as an afterthought "and creepy, really fucking creepy,"

"Right," he looked a little shocked at her use of language and once again she had to remind herself that he was from the forties.

"And bloody vicious, watch out for his sceptre,"

"Good to know,"

"He caught me with it, hurts like hell," she grudgingly admitted her defeat.

"You up for this?" he asked concern clear in his tone.

"Of course," she snorted, trying not to feel too irritated. "I have accelerated healing, nothing sticks,"

This was not strictly true. Her injuries had been extreme and despite her many attempts at recouping after the ordeal, she remained fatigued with her energy levels nowhere near her best. In the chaos she had not yet had the chance to fully recover. However, she had no intention of revealing her weakness, after all she was still perfectly capable of fighting if need be. Steve looked doubtful but thankfully did not push it.

* * *

Yan had to admit that she took great pleasure from seeing Loki hit with a blast from his sceptre, reflected off Steve's shield, especially as the smug git had just been monologuing in his typically arrogant fashion to a group of terrified German civilians. People were streaming out of the gala hall and across the square, confusion and fear causing havoc as they ran in their evening wear, stumbling over dress hems and unwieldy high heels. Two police cars were blocking the road where they had been hurled by another sceptre blast, lying on their backs with wheels still spinning furiously and sirens wailing piteously.

"Loki, drop the weapon and stand down," Natasha ordered over the loud speaker as she manoeuvred the quinjet round to aim machine guns at him.

The god in question just smirked and shot a bolt of blue in their direction. Reacting instinctively Yan took over the system and twisted the plane sideways, sending it spinning out of the way. It took a little more effort to right it again so that she could relinquish control to her superior.

"You going to sit this one out?" the agent asked.

"Rogers looks like he's holding his own," she answered non-committedly. There was no point in wasting her energy reserves when she could use the time to analyse Loki's fighting technique and prepare herself for the next battle. Anyway, it was true that the Captain was doing well, despite being knocked about by blows from the sceptre.

"The guy's all over the place," Natasha commented.

"Hmm," Yan was suspicious. The previous grace and elegance of the god had descended into messy scrapping and there was no sign of his daggers or the green flashes of his magic, leaving his method of attack much weakened. It was if he intended to lose.

Suddenly deafening rock music began to resound through the cockpit as the system malfunctioned and was overridden by an external force. Yan would have been alarmed if it was not for Romanov rolling her eyes and sighing theatrically, obviously recognising the perpetrator.

"Did you miss me, Agent Romanov?" a flirtatious comment heralded the arrival of Iron man, still decked out in flashy red and gold.

"Dear god, is he always like this?"

"Stark likes a grand entrance,"

Landing on the paving stones in front of Loki with an audible thud, he aimed what appeared to be every weapon he had at the alien having already dealt him a blow with a repulsor beam, "Make your move, Reindeer Games,"

 _Reindeer Games? If he gives me a nickname he will live to regret it._

To her shock, Loki raised his hands in surrender without even a suggestion of further resistance, his armour and frankly absurd helmet dematerialising. He had been knocked back several metres and slammed into some steps with considerable force, separated from his lethal sceptre, but she knew he could fight fiercely regardless. This behaviour only confirmed her suspicions that something was up.

* * *

"Is the mask entirely necessary?" Stark asked, prodding Yan to get her attention. "I mean it's kinda effective, very menacing, you know, if you were going for creepy – were you going for creepy? Whatever, it's creepy,"

"It's necessary," she snapped furiously, absolutely reaching her limit of tolerance.

 _I thought it wasn't possible, but I've done it. I've found someone more irritating that Barton!_

"Little ray of sunshine, aren't ya?" he grinned, clearly delighting in her irritation. Steve frowned disapprovingly at him which had zero effect as he was clearly not the sort of man to give a damn about anyone else's opinion. Deciding she was not going to win by replying, Yan simply ignored him.

Tragically this only spurred him to fill the silence, "I mean, you actually call yourself Nightmare! But I guess it goes with the territory – have you read your Pysch report?"

"Stark," Steve warned.

"Oh come on! Have _you_ read it? Really makes sense now I've seen her outfit, little bit Addams Family don't you think? No? Guessed you missed that one in the ice," he babbled.

 _Doesn't stop, does he?_

Catching sight of Loki smirking at her, Yan decided to make a strategic retreat to the cockpit before she snapped and actually killed someone, satisfying herself with envisioning violent ends for the architects of her fury. She slumped down beside Natasha, tugging her legs up to her chest to rest her chin on her knees, to her annoyance, her feet did not quite touch the floor in the jet.

"Don't let him get under your skin," Romanov advised, speaking in Russian so that the others could not understand, "Stark doesn't play well with others. He takes pleasure from riling people up,"

"No worries, it's irritating but it doesn't bother me," she replied, utilising the gift of the seventh guardian to converse fluently in a language she knew little of.

"Oh?"

"No, I know I can fry his suit and leave him stuck in a tonne of metal," She grinned. "Now _that_ amuses me,"

Her comment elicited a snort of laughter from the agent and confused glances from the other passengers. Well, confused from Steve, nosily curious from Stark, and downright odd from Loki. She'd have thought he was trying to read her mind from the intensity of his gaze upon her back, if it weren't for the assurances of the Saran that it shielded her from such attacks. This revelation had been most comforting to her, as the idea that anyone could have any power over her in that way particularly unnerved someone who had spent most of their life with their mind being their only thing they had free reign over. Still, it was beginning to unsettle her.

There was a sudden crack of thunder and the windscreen was bombarded with heavy drops of water as a storm swirled around them, growing at a surprising rate. Yan liked storms, seeing them as essentially a source of natural energy for her, but the unexpected arrival had her concerned. There had been no warning on the sophisticated radar system of the plane and the usual buzz of static in the Saran that accompanied the build-up of lightening was suspiciously absent.

Natasha was completely unfazed, used to flying through much grimmer weather. She had told her once about a disastrous mission wherein she had to fly out during a volcanic eruption with her view almost entirely obscured by ash and the engines struggling and constantly threatening to cut out. Yan twisted in her seat in order to get a better view of Loki, deciding it wise to keep an eye on him since the storm had a taste of the paranormal about it.

"Agent Romanov," Fury's voice was slightly unclear, broken up by interference from the storm.

"Sir," she acknowledged. "Still en route with the prisoner,"

"Said anything?"

"Not a word,"

 _No, just a whole lot of weird looks and irritating smirks._

"Just get him here. We're low on time,"

"Yes, sir," the radio fell silent again.

"I don't like it," Steve said quietly, frowning slightly at the hunched figure of the still uncommunicative demigod. They had gravitated towards the cockpit, putting as much distance as possible between them and Loki to avoid him eavesdropping on their conversation. Yan felt this was slightly futile; Asgardian's had very good hearing.

"What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?" Stark grinned.

"I don't remember it being that easy," he explained, not reacting to Stark's irritating turn of phrase. "This guy packs a wallop,"

"Still, you were pretty spry, for an older fellow. What's your thing? Pilates?"

"What?"

"It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle,"

There was an unbearable smugness about the man that gave off the impression that he was frankly delighted with his sense of humour. He did not seem to take anything seriously nor to care much about anyone's opinion, which mostly translated into everyone around him being both offended and unsure of where they stood. She honestly wondered if he liked anyone beyond himself.

 _And what the fuck is calisthenics?_

"Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in," Even Steve, who had the patience of a S.H.I.E.L.D. IT worker trying to explain the system to a newbie, obviously disliked the man.

"Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you,"

 _That at least we agree on._

There was another rolling boom that echoed through the narrow confines of the plane and several violent flashes of lightening that illuminated the sky, showing dark, brooding clouds pulsing with light.

"Where's this coming from?" Natasha muttered.

"Doesn't feel quite right," Yan replied.

"What's the matter? Scared of a little lightning?" Stark taunted Loki, who was looking strangely shaken.

 _Practically the same shade of green as his clothes._

"I'm not overly fond of what follows," he said

Yan was beginning to think that Fate had a sense of humour. That or the hulking mass of muscle and flashy armour, who had just torn the cargo hatch of the jet, grabbed their former prisoner and vanished back into the night, had been waiting for a suitably dramatic moment.

"What the actual fuck?" she muttered. "Could this day get any more bizarre?"

"And now there's that guy," Stark commented, already moving towards the gaping hole in the plane.

"Another Asgardian?" Natasha asked, struggling to keep it level with the sudden change in pressure. If anything, the storm was beginning to grow fiercer, battering them on all sides with violent gusts of wind and a torrential onslaught of water.

"If I had to bet on it," Yan affirmed. "Thor, god of Thunder, seems a likely fit,"

Though it had only been a flash and most of her view had been taken up by his ridiculous red cloak, she was pretty certain she recognised him from the memories of Asgeir. The excessive display of power certainly fit her impression of the man.

"Think the guy's a friendly?" Steve asked, ever the pragmatist.

"Doesn't matter," Stark interjected, "If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost,"

"Stark we need a plan of attack!" Steve objected as he made to start the pursuit.

"I have a plan,"

 _Now there's a surprise._

"Attack,"

 _Ah, how predictable._

And with that last cocky statement he was gone, swiftly enveloped by the dark clouds such that even the light of his repulsor engines was obscured. With an irritated sigh, the captain snatched up a parachute.

"I'd sit this one out, Cap," Natasha advised.

 _Please don't! A sensible voice is required all they'll destroy half the continent._

"I don't see how I can,"

"These guys come from legends, they're basically Gods,"

"There's only one God, ma'am. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that," he saluted and leapt out. Yan was at least relieved to know that someone else had realised quite how absurd the Asgardian sense of style was.

"You're going?" it was more of a statement than a question.

"The last thing we need is to waste time and energy on a pointless show of machismo," She explained. "No doubt they've left Loki unattended anyway. I don't quite fancy explaining that one to Fury when we return without our prisoner,"

Natasha laughed, "Ok, I'll try to land,"

Yan nodded her acknowledgment and morphed into a raven to dive through the torn up air towards the ground, deciding a smaller form would make navigation of the tempest a little easier. Below her a jagged mountain peak rose up, having pierced the thick forest that swarmed over the lower slopes and up towards other peaks, compressed in the tight twists of the narrow valley and sparse on the high rocky inclines. The trees were bowed under the weight of rain, their tangled branches heavy with water sodden pine needles. Gales of wind carved great furrows through the dark green mass like waves on a storm tossed ocean of leaves.

The landscape was scarred where rows of trees had been smashed apart and knocked over, their roots torn from the ground, taking each other down like dominoes. Here and there short bursts of flame flared up and then swiftly fizzled out thanks to the onslaught flooding the ground. The cause of this carnage was very clearly Iron Man and Thor throwing each other around and generally making a tremendous mess of the forest.

True to her assumption, Loki was indeed completely unattended, standing on a ledge looking down on the skirmish with faint amusement. However, he was not making any attempt at escape or even hiding which was about as suspicious as Clint choosing salad over pizza. She was beginning to feel as if it would be a huge mistake to let him on the helicarrier, yet it was not really her decision to make and they had to learn something about his plans.

 _And about Clint._

So she dropped down to land beside him on the ledge, changing back into her human form at the last moment. She left her cloak halfway through the transition so that it was covered with thick, glossy feathers, as a further barrier against the wind and rain. She was incredibly grateful for the gift of the fourth guardian at this point for keeping her dry.

"So you're the latest host of the Saran,"

Yan did not reply, feeling the answer was fairly obvious and hoping he would go back to being silent and broody. The last thing she wanted to do right now was have an awkward conversation with him; her communication skills were poor at the best of times and she was pretty certain Fury wanted him alive.

"Strange that such a powerful entity would choose a human," he continued, much to her disappointment. "You are so short-lived,"

"Why do you assume I'm human?" she countered, aware that he was goading her but being too cross not to take the bait.

He laughed then, with a tone of amusement that sounded entirely fake to her ears, "You're small and weak, of course you are mortal,"

"Last I checked, you bleed the same colour I do, I'd say that makes you mortal too," she really hated being called weak.

 _Small? Just because you're so bloody lanky._

He just smirked at her, "And you work for S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Unless they've fired me in the past hour,"

"It surprises me that you would tie yourself to such an organisation. You possess the power to level cities and yet you follow the whims of misguided men,"

 _Dear lord, there are so many issues with that statement, I don't even know where to start._

"Are you not the same man who just called me ' _small and weak'?"_ Yan quoted him mockingly, deciding to go with the most obvious of his contradictions.

"You possess it, but you don't use it. They send you on little errands for them and limit what you can do, whilst their scientists poke at you," he pronounced 'scientists' with the disgust of someone who knew what it was like to be studied and messed with for the pursuit of some greater goal.

It was clear he was trying to turn her against S.H.I.E.L.D, trying to slip insidious doubt under her skin and to awaken some sort of power greedy tendency within her, but it wasn't going to work. She knew where she stood with S.H.I.E.L.D; she sort of trusted them and they sort of trusted her. It worked.

What alarmed her about his words was quite how much he seemed to know about her setup. Sure it was a negative, simplistic portrayal of it, but it was still stuff he shouldn't have known. Her only thought was of Clint, that he was alive – at least this was her hope – and that he had told Loki this stuff.

 _No, there's no way he'd betray us like that. Stop trying to get into my head you bastard!_ But then she remembered those unnaturally blue eyes and her chest constricted with an overwhelming sinking feeling. If he knew this about her, he knew everything, and their chances of victory had just decreased significantly. She knew better than to ask him though and show her attachment, she could not let him know of any weakness.

So Yan just snorted as disdainfully as she could and turned her gaze back to the battle in front of her. Whilst she had been distracted by the tedious ramblings of her companion, Steve had arrived and was attempting to halt the fighting with limited effect. Suddenly, Thor leapt at him, swinging what looked like a hammer in a wide arc to slam it down on his shield.

She feared her newest ally would be flattened, but to both her shock and delight the shield held fast. There was a tremendous clear note like the sound of a gong being struck and for a moment everything seemed to still as the forest held its breath. And then shockwaves exploded outwards tossing Thor back as if he were a rag doll and flattening trees in a mile radius. As a lucky side effect, the storm finally died away.

"Huh," she exclaimed. "Would you look at that! Guess that shield wasn't so shabby after all,"

Pulling herself out of her shock, she grabbed Loki roughly by the collar, taking her irritation out on him while she had the chance, and leapt from the ledge. The slightly shocked yelp was incredibly satisfying to hear. Landing less than gracefully (if only to annoy him) she dragged him over to the others who were drifting back together from where they had been thrown.

"If you're quite done engaging in your pointless infighting, perhaps we could return to base?" Yan said scathingly. "I was under the impression we had a Tesseract to find,"

"I was retrieving the prisoner," Stark complained, flipping up his face plate to glare at her sulkily.

"Your methods leave much to be desired," she muttered, rolling her eyes and turned to address the God of Thunder, who was currently examining her with some confusion.

"I am Nightmare, newest host of the Saran," she introduced herself.

"Lady Nightmare," he nodded in acknowledgement and she had to hold back a snort of laughter at being called lady, "I am Thor of Asgard, I understand that my brother is your prisoner but I ask that you release him so that he may face Asgardian justice,"

"I don't have the authority to do so, and either way we need to find the Tesseract first and the agents he has brainwashed. If you would return with us to base I'm sure we can work something out,"

"I will come to this base you speak of, my lady, I too seek the Tesseract. Asgard would return it to the safety of our vaults,"

Relieved that he had agreed, she made no objection to his plans concerning the Tesseract, though she doubted the World Council would not be best pleased by his conditions. Personally, she thought it would be a wise decision to give it back to those who understood its power.

"Nat, can you bring the plane down?" Yan radioed her.

"Landing shouldn't be a problem, getting back in the air not so much," the reply came through. "The storm has interfered with the engines, I'm using auxiliary power,"

"I've got it covered,"

"Like in Morocco?"

"Yep,"

The quinjet came into view losing height in uneven spurts and jumps as the engines continued to malfunction.

"There's no way she's gonna get her back in the air again," Stark objected.

" _She_ doesn't have to,"

Finally it came to a shuddering halt on the ground, emitting a few ominous sparks as it settled into the sodden mulch of torn up earth and pine needles. Twisting a particularly errant piece of metal back into place as she climbed back into the plane, she gestured for the others to follow. It was rather cramped with all of them in, especially as it was decidedly unwise to stand anyway near the gaping hole. Thor at least had the good grace to look mildly apologetic about it.

"Ready?" she asked Natasha, who nodded in affirmation.

"Seriously, what is your plan here?" Stark asked, but she ignored him in favour of syncing with the engines and bringing the plane into the sphere of influence of the gift of the third guardian. The tortured metal groaned and shuddered but, just as in Morocco, it began to rise straight up smoothly such that the only sign that it was moving was the view of the outside scenery rushing by in an inky blur. When they had reached a sufficient height above the forest floor, she booted up the engines and gave back control to Romanov, who swiftly corrected their course to head back to the helicarrier.

"And the X-wing rises!" Stark announced with a faux grandiose tone, "Should have mentioned you were a Jedi,"

He was met with nothing but confused looks but unperturbed he prattled on, "Actually, you've got more of a Sith vibe,"

"What the hell are you going on about?" Yan snapped.

"Come on! Star Wars? Seriously?" he exclaimed, "It's a classic,"

"Again, what the hell are you saying?"

"It's a film," he explained. "Where have you been all your life?"

"An underground bunker," she replied with a tone so pointed you could knit with it.

"But you got out, what, six months ago?" unsurprisingly he didn't get the message.

"And?"

"And you haven't seen Star Wars?"

"Kinda had more important things to be getting on with," she muttered. She actually recognised the title; it was next on the list for her and Clint to watch, since she had point blank refused to watch another unrealistic super spy film. The thought brought a pang of worry that she swiftly brushed aside.

"What are these star wars you speak of, man of metal? Asgard certainly did not fight in these battles," Thor asked, alleviating some of her irritation through sheer amusement at his misunderstanding.

Stark face palmed melodramatically, "Surely I am not in the minority for knowing what Star Wars is? Capsicle?" he received only a bemused shake of the head, "Natashalie? Come on, give me a hand here,"

 _Natashalie?_

"Sorry Stark, not really my thing,"

The rest of the journey was taken up with him trying to explain TV to Thor, which at least had the advantage of taking the spot light off her.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review :D**


	23. Chapter 19

**Hi everyone!**

 **Sorry this is late! I was out of the country and then if i'm being totally honest i literally forgot :/ Anyway, it's here now! Warnings for bad language.**

 **Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

"Shit! How old are you?!" Stark exclaimed, causing her to look up from her plate somewhat reluctantly. She had taken off her mask in order to practically inhale food, tired as she was from the exertion of the past few hours, and had not stopped to consider the effect that the revealing of her face might have.

"Seventeen, give or take," she shrugged, "What, it wasn't in my _Psych report?"_ she took care to pronounce the last two words with some venom.

"Sheesh, talk about a baby-faced killer," he muttered, shaking his head in mild disbelief.

They were finally back on the helicarrier and were gathered on the bridge to confer on plans for the next steps. Loki was stored away in the high tech cell somewhere in the bowels of the ship where she didn't have to feel his unsettling gaze on her back all the time and she had a heavily laden plate of food in front of her. In other words, things were beginning to look up. She still had some worrying suspicions about how easy – kerfuffle with Thor not being considered – it had been to bring him in. She disliked being controlled at the best of times and being a pawn in somebody else's plans was never fun.

He was currently being interrogated by Fury, which was providing some mild entertainment but also adding fuel to the fire of her doubts. He was far too smug and confident for her liking, though she was beginning to believe that was his constant state of being. Thor was looking on with a thrown, seemingly just as troubled as she was, but presumably for different reasons. He seemed changed from the arrogant, wild young man from Asgeir's memories, though she supposed it had been quite some time since then. He was much more serious; he held himself as if a great weight of responsibility had settled upon his shoulders and there was a certain look in his face that spoke of having to learn that attitude the hard way. She had a feeling it was probably due to his brother.

"Seriously, where are you putting all that?" Stark asked as she was brought a third plate of food, "Do you really need to eat that much?"

"I use a lot of energy," Yan protested round a mouthful of pasta. "I get hungry,"

"Ha! I remember the last Saran could eat three roast boars at a feast and still have room for a whole cow!" Thor laughed, slapping her on the back with such force that she almost choked. "Of course, he was twice your size,"

 _Here we go again._ She resisted punching him, though she deeply wished to do so, this had to be a least the fifth time he had compared her in such a way to Asgeir and she was dangerously close to the limit of her tolerance. She settled instead for viciously crushing a slice of toast to put in her tomato soup. She took some gratification from the fact that he and Asgeir had sparred several times and the last time they had full out fought the Saran had won by an easy margin due to subterfuge, not height. She was at least spared more of Stark's taunting as he was called away by Coulson to look at some engine or other. She wasn't really listening.

They made an odd group, awkwardly hanging about round the centre table watching Loki through the holoscreens with varying degrees of tense anxiety playing havoc with their body language. A demigod who looked like an Australian surfer, an out of time soldier not quite sure if he was supposed to take the lead or not, a scientist so highly strung he might explode at any moment – literally – a superspy who was feeling the loss of the one person she really trusted, and of course her.

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Banner remarked sarcastically as the interrogation finally drew to a close.

"Loki's gonna drag this out," Steve said decisively. "So, Thor, what's his play?"

"He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people and they will win him the earth in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract,"

"The Chitauri?" Yan finally put down her fork, the name ringing alarm bells.

"You know of them, Lady Nightmare?"

"They're a warrior race out from beyond the reach of the nine realms, deep space," she recalled what she had learnt from the Saran's archives. "The Saran has never been to their territory but it's come across them enough times to know them. They're the perfect army: vicious, replaceable, numerous and with destruction their only purpose in life,"

"What do they want with the Tesseract?" Steve asked.

"Not them," she shook her head. "They owe their loyalty, if you could call it that, to Thanos,"

"The Mad Titan? Loki did not mention him to me,"

 _That's hardly surprising._

"Thanos will not give Loki the Earth, he will destroy it," Yan said darkly. "No doubt he has his sights set on a greater prize,"

"Asgard,"

"I should think so,"

"This army, are they still on the other side of the universe?" Banner asked. He had taken off his glasses and was fiddling nervously with them.

"Probably, they wouldn't need Loki if they were close,"

"So he's building another portal," Banner surmised. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for,"

"Selvig?" Thor asked.

"He's an astrophysicist,"

"He's a friend," he corrected.

"Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with several of ours," Natasha added. Yan had discovered that along with the scientists, Barton, and a few other luckless agents – or fortunate, depending on how you looked at it, they were still alive – Manning and Wilson had been drafted in to help with the evacuation process and had been brainwashed by Loki on his way out. She hated it when people took what was hers.

"I want to know why Loki let us take him," Steve asked, finally giving voice to the most pertinent question of all. "He's not leading an army from here,"

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki," Banner disagreed. "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him,"

Yan snorted in amusement, "Yeah, he's clearly delusional if he thinks he's anything more than Thanos' puppet,"

"Have care how you speak," Thor warned, stepping forward aggressively, "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother,"

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha pointed out, one immaculate eyebrow raised questioningly.

"He's adopted," Thor backtracked rather hurriedly.

 _Adopted? Well that explains a lot. This whole thing is probably some sort of elaborate revenge. Jeez, they should really get therapists on Asgard._

"I think it's about the mechanics," Banner continued. "Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?"

"It's a stabilizing agent," Stark interjected, striding back into the room with Coulson in tow, he was muttering something to him but the words were indistinct and she didn't catch them. "No hard feelings Point Break, you've got a mean swing,"

He patted Thor on his arm, earning a half offended, half confused look, and added "Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D. Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants."

"Wouldn't he need more?" Yan asked, she had absorbed the reports and Selvig's notes that S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided and was now something of an expert on the various complicated bits of physics that were required for understanding how the Tesseract worked. Science really wasn't her thing and she hadn't bothered to cover any of the low level gaps in her knowledge before, but she felt it would be useful. In other words, she didn't really know what the hell she was saying.

"The blowback coming off that thing was way in excess of the four gigawatts that the available mass could handle, assuming they manage to utilise all of it,"

Stark was giving her an appraising look that very much suggested he knew she was sort of making it up, "There were measurements taken? I didn't see those in the report, could probably help us track it down,"

"Not exactly. The Saran absorbs energy, but it has its limits," she explained. "The Tesseract blew right through those limits,"

"Meaning?"

"I was in its path when the portal opened and it burnt a hole through my sternum. Take it from me, that thing is fucking powerful,"

There was a moment of shocked silence as her words were computed.

"Sorry, what?"

"Accelerated healing. You sure you read my file? Cause it's all in there,"

"I was kinda assuming they meant you could get stabbed and walk it off, not that you could survive being impaled by an energy beam. Wow, you're just full of surprises kid," she shrugged, "Hey, you know what? You should definitely come down to my lab some time – "

"No," Yan interrupted him immediately.

"Come on! You're basically the mother board for an alien super computer, just think about all the –"

"Stark, this is not the time," Hill came to her rescue, snapping the billionaire out of his excited babble with a stern glare. "Back on topic if you would,"

"I'd say that with a power like the Tesseract you'd only need enough to stabilise it momentarily as then the feedback would be enough to create a self-sustaining loop," Banner answered, he had begun pacing back and forth seemingly to avoid having to make prolonged eye contact with anyone.

"Right," Stark agreed. "And the rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube,"

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Hill asked.

 _Well, he's more convincing than me._

"Last night," Came the cocksure reply. "The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading? Well, apart from Darth Vader here, but technically that doesn't count seeing as it takes her like a millisecond. That's another Star Wars reference by the way,"

"I figured,"

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked, steering the conversation back to more important matters. Yan was beginning to suspect that he disliked the man as much as she did.

"He would have to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Banner theorized.

"Unless," Stark countered. "Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunnelling effect,"

"That seems likely, the Tesseract is semi-sentient," Yan agreed. _I would be willing to bet on fully. "_ It holds knowledge and Loki seems to have some sort of control over it with his sceptre – limited admittedly, but enough to transfer that knowledge through whatever spell he's got Selvig and the others under."

When she had been bombarded with the cube's energy, she had also received endless broken snippets of information that had been too muddled to make sense of, spoken in a thousand tongues and distorted and warped by both time and interference. She had heard it speaking to her, trying to slip into her mind. She had seen the way Clint had suddenly seemed to know stuff he shouldn't have, Selvig too had eyes filled with a strange look of revelation as if untold secrets had been revealed to him.

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet," Banner concluded.

 _Great, well that totally narrows it down._

"Finally, someone who speaks English!" Stark grinned, moving to shake his hand.

"Is that what just happened?" Steve asked, looking as perplexed as she felt.

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled," Stark smiled. _I wonder how long it'll take until he says something inappropriate._ "And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

 _Ah, there we go._

"Umm, thanks," he replied awkwardly, seeming quite taken aback.

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube," Fury said, striding in with his usual dramatic flair, "I was hoping you might join him,"

"Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a Hydra weapon," Steve said.

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys," Fury scowled.

"Monkeys?" Thor asked, "I do not understand,"

 _Not a word about the quantum mechanics, but this is what you pick up on?_

"I do!" Steve grinned excitedly, eliciting eye rolls from Stark and general amusement from everyone else, "I understood that reference," he added sheepishly.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review!**


	24. Chapter 20

**Hey everyone!**

 **Here's the latest chapter. I'm afraid after this I'm going to have to go on hiatus for a while as study leave is starting soon and I haven't written any chapters after this one.**

 **Thank you so much for all the favourites, follows and comments I've received on this so far! It's really meant a lot to me, especially comments! It's actually made me get into the habit of commenting on other people's work a lot more, as I understand how much writers appreciate feedback.**

 **Anyway, hope you enjoy :D**

* * *

Yan had not missed the moment when Stark had surreptitiously attached a small disc to the underside of one of the monitors on the bridge. Nor did she miss the almost imperceptible flicker of the screen which told her what it was: a bug. She didn't know what he was looking for, or why he would hack into S.H.I.E.L.D. at a time like this, and her curiosity was certainly piqued. She had considered alerting Coulson, Natasha or even Fury to the bug's presence, after all she was supposed to on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s side, but she wanted to know the purpose of the bug so she had kept quiet. Sure, she could have hacked them herself if she had really wanted to, but it was easier to just wait. Besides, this way all the blame lay with Stark.

Deciding on this course of plausible deniability, she stopped to chat with Coulson for a while before following after Stark to keep an eye on him. She gave her preliminary mission report – paper work was the most tedious thing about working for S.H.I.E.L.D. even if she could finish it much faster than anyone else. It was something of a relief to talk to someone she actually liked for a while after the travails of having to deal with possibly the most infuriating man on earth.

She then strolled around the helicarrier for a while, partly in order to kill a bit more time so that her sudden arrival at the labs would not appear to suspicious and partly so that she got to know the layout a bit better. Of course, she had the floor plan memorised but she had found that first-hand experience was often preferable if it came to a fight and the uneasy feeling in her gut was telling her it just well might.

When she finally found herself in the science department as she thought of it, a shining row of glass and metal, high tech labs nestled in the side of the curved hull, she was surprised to see Rogers had beaten her to it. And, completely unsurprisingly, he and Stark were arguing.

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark,"

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables,"

"You think Fury's hiding something?"

"He's a spy! Captain," Stark snorted dismissively. "He's _the_ spy. His secrets have secrets,"

"Director Fury is most likely hiding stuff from you, S.H.I.E.L.D. operates on a need to know basis, whatever it is, it's clearly not relevant," Yan interrupted, entering the room and jumping up to sit on one of the tables with her back to the sheet of reinforced glass looking out over the clouds. Banner was noticeably trying to make himself smaller and to stay out of the fight, scanning the sceptre with various complicated devices like he had never seen anything more fascinating in his life.

"Little miss Nightmare," Stark greeted her with a glint in his eye that made her regret not selling him out to Fury. "It's becoming a party in here,"

"Four makes a party?" She raised an eyebrow scathingly.

"You know, I didn't really take you as the loyal type,"

"What are you implying?" She snapped, biting out the words with as much restraint as she could muster.

"Aren't you the least bit curious?" A noticeable change of tack, which might have been his instincts for self-preservation kicking in. "You don't want to know what they're up to?"

"It's not relevant," She shrugged. "Also, I value my employment enough to not go snooping around,"

 _Now wasn't that ironic._

"Or maybe you know already," he suggested, picking up a bag of blueberries and stuffing them in his mouth like a child.

"If I did I wouldn't tell you,"

Stark shrugged, "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"

Banner looked up, startled that the spotlight had been turned on him, "Uh…I just want to finish my work here and…"

"Doctor?" Steve prompted. He was still in his uniform, the neon red, white and blue looking a little cartoonish, yet somehow he managed to carry it off with some dignity still intact.

Banner looked between the two of them and sighed reluctantly, resigning himself to taking a side "'A warm light for all mankind to share', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube,"

"I heard it,"

"Well, I think that was meant for you," he continued, gesturing at Stark.

"Makes sense," Yan agreed. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news, and he doesn't seem to need an excuse to mock us,"

"The Stark Tower? That big, ugly…" Steve caught Stark's unimpressed look and hurriedly tailed off, "…building in New York?"

 _It certainly was over-the-top._

"That's just the prototype," he confirmed, waving his packet of blueberries at Banner until he yielded and took one, "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now, you know, self-sustaining energy sources and all that,"

"So why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" Banner finished.

Yan had not even stopped to think about that, but now that he mentioned it, it did seem strange. The project had been run with the assistance and approval of the American government, hence the presence of NASA scientists at the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. base, but it had never really made sense for S.H.I.E.L.D. to be in charge.

"Is that what your decryption programme is looking for?" She asked, deciding to get straight to the point even though he had already been playing into her hands by discussing his intentions openly for her to hear.

He did not seem particularly surprised that she had noticed, "It's certainly something I'll look into,"

"I'm sorry," Steve interjected, frowning in both disapproval and disbelief, "Did you say…?"

"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide," Stark grinned and pointed the bag of blueberries at him, "blueberry?"

"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?" Yan had yet to see him looking truly angry, but it seemed Stark just had an unbelievable ability to rub people up the wrong way.

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically not awesome,"

"Usually the intelligence is on other people," Yan pointed out.

"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed," Steve said, "We have orders, we should follow them,"

 _Never a truer word spoken._

"Following is not really my style,"

 _You don't say…_

"And you're all about style, aren't you?" Rogers snapped and Yan began to worry that her reliably sensible voice was about to let her down.

"Of the people in this room, which one is a) wearing a spangly outfit, and b) not of use?" Stark asked, familiar infuriating grin in place.

"Just find the cube," Steve ordered, refusing to rise to the bait, and marched out.

"I'd offer you a blueberry, but you'd probably eat me out of house and home," Stark said to her, completely unabashed about what had just occurred.

"You know your programmes will be picked up before you find what you're looking for," Yan said, choosing to ignore his other comments.

"I think you're underestimating my genius,"

"And I think you're underestimating S.H.I.E.L.D." she replied, "Its algorithms bombard you with lower level information to prevent you getting to the important stuff, anything about the Tesseract's got to be level 8 at least. And they'll be on red alert for any intrusions at the moment,"

"And you know this because?"

"I've hacked it before," She shrugged. "I got caught,"

"Aha! I knew it!" Stark exclaimed triumphantly.

"Technically, it was before I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D,"

He just grinned at her, "So, why don't you tell us what they're hiding,"

"About the Tesseract? I don't know, never got that far," she shook her head, "from the rest, I haven't seen anything I can't accept,"

"I can't imagine that includes much,"

"Again, _what_ are you implying?"

"Well, you're not exactly whiter than white,"

"Says the so called Merchant of Death,"

"Takes one to know one," a cocky smirk.

"Whatever, my point stands," she brushed aside his pointed jibes.

"You could find it quicker,"

"But I'm not going to,"

"Why? Because you trust them?" he asked mockingly, suddenly serious. "If you did you would have ratted me out all ready,"

"Maybe I'm interested but as I said, I value my employment,"

"So plausible deniability," he said pointed at her with some pointy bit of metal. "Makes sense, a very spy thing to do,"

"We'll see, maybe you'll surprise me and actually get somewhere before they shut you down,"

"Maybe,"

"You know, Rogers isn't wrong about Loki, he does have the jump on us," Banner said.

"I agree, when I fought him back at the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. base, he looked like shit but fought like a beast outta hell. I shot him and he just looked a bit pissed off. In Stuttgart all he did was posture for a bit and then give up,"

"So…what? He wants to be here?" Banner asked.

"He could be after whatever S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hiding," Stark said.

"I doubt it," Yan rejected the idea. "Anything he needs to know, he knows already from the agents he's brainwashed. I'd say he doesn't so much want something from us as to get in amongst us, he's already doing a pretty good job of sowing doubts, considering your obsession with finding S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets,"

"Technically, it's our obsession," Stark corrected. "The guy is crazy, he could want nothing at all. Whatever his plan is it's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does,"

"You're awfully confident,"

"Yeah well, I know what I'm doing. I definitely don't need Capsicle telling me what to do. That's the guy my dad never shut up about? Wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice,"

Yan was beginning to feel like Stark's persecution of Rogers was much more personal than his usual taunting. Sighing she hopped down from the countertop and made to leave, deciding she would go find what Steve was up to, perhaps discuss strategy with him, or some other useful thing.

"Leaving so soon?"

"I have things to do,"

"Things like hacking in to S.H.I.E.L.D. for me?"

"No, Stark,"

"Well come back if you change your mind, _lady_ Nightmare," he smirked at her and she stalked out in irritation only to march back in again, deciding she couldn't take his mockery any more.

"Yan, my name is Yan, for god's sake just call me Yan," She scowled and caught sight of the screens flashing up with decrypted files as his bug began to reach the higher levels of security.

"Well, look at that, I'm right, as usual," he grinned. "No surprises there,"

"Don't be so sure, you're only on level six," she frowned.

"Yan, I need you in Banner's lab, now," Natasha spoke over her comms. "Loki means to unleash the Hulk,"

"There already,"

For once, the Russian was telling her everything she needed to know. There was a barely perceptible hitch in her voice that was smoothed out by the third word, suggesting that her interrogation of Loki had been unpleasant. Or it could have been alarm at the alien's plan to have them trapped in a flying metal container with a rampaging beast. She glanced over to Banner, who was frowning in consternation at the sceptre, clearly still worried about the situation.

 _Little does he know…_

"What are you doing, Mr. Stark?" Fury snarled, sweeping into the room.

"Uh…kind of been wondering the same thing about you,"

She marvelled at how calm he was; even she found the director intimidating and she could get away with this kind of thing.

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract,"

"We are," Banner interjected, "The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile,"

"And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss. What is Phase 2?" Stark turned to a screen as the title of a file flashed up. Just after it froze and went black as the S.H.I.E.L.D. technicians finally regained control of the system and shut him out. "Just as we were getting to the good bit,"

 _I did warn you._

"Phase 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D using the cube to make weapons," Steve announced, slamming down an oversized gun on a table with some force as he came in, "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow for me,"

"Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're – "

"I'm gonna have to disagree there," Yan interrupted as the screens flickered to life again at her touch.

"Agent?" There was a clear tone of warning in his voice, but she had had enough of all the dancing around the question. As they had argued, she had forced her way back into the computers, piggy-backing on the remnants of Stark's bug to jumpstart the process of reaching the secret files. What she found was a whole load of weapon plans, which she brought up for all to see.

"I'm sorry Nick, what were you lying?" Stark grinned, "Thanks, kid,"

"I was wrong, Director, the world hasn't changed a bit," Steve looked thunderous and betrayed, which she thought was overdoing it. Sure, Fury should have told them about it, but it wasn't unreasonable for an organisation like S.H.I.E.L.D. to be making weapons. If anything, she had more of a right to feel betrayed, they had asked her to examine it for them and had lied all the same. Those weapons could be made to take down her.

"Did you know about this?" Banner asked Natasha as she entered with Thor. The room was beginning to feel a bit cramped, not to mention the confrontational atmosphere that was brewing.

"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" She replied, not deigning to answer his question.

"I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed," he laughed mirthlessly, a dangerous glint in his eye. Yan began to feel the prickle under her skin that was the Saran's warning of danger; her body was preparing itself to fight. Something else was beginning to stir at the back of her brain, a terrible itch that was scratching at her thoughts and making her temples throb painfully.

"Loki's manipulating you," She said to the doctor, holding his gaze with a calm expression, ignoring the feeling and trying to hold on to her focus. "We can have you out of here and back in Calcutta soon enough,

"I'm not leaving just because suddenly you're all getting a little twitchy. I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction,"

"Because of him," Fury said, pointing at Thor, who had been observing the argument with detached amusement.

"Me?" he looked surprised.

"Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town," Fury explained, "We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, out gunned.

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet,"

"Really?" Yan asked incredulously, rubbing at the sides of her head with her knuckles. "Because last time I checked, it was _your_ brother who was invading,"

"And you're not the only people out there," Fury added, "You're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled,"

"What like me?" She asked, eyes narrowing. "You planning to use those in case I decide I'm not happy just following your orders?"

"Agent, that is not what's going to happen here,"

"Maybe I would feel more secure if you had told me about this,"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. operates on a need to know basis, you know how that works,"

"I would consider this need to know!" she snarled. She was struggling to remain calm and collected, even though she knew now was not the time to be arguing, that it made sense for S.H.I.E.L.D. to be making weapons, that she had been fine with not knowing this before. But the blood in her veins was burning; anger and rage boiled within threatening to bubble over and escape.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war," Thor said, folding his arms and looking like an unimpressed parent looking over his squabbling children.

 _So fucking patronising._ Natasha was observing as well, one eye on Banner at all times, at least she knew better than to be drawn into this fight. Yan should know better too, but she was too furious.

"You forced our hand," Fury argued, "We had to come up with something,"

"A nuclear deterrent," Stark scoffed, "Cause that always calms everything right down,"

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?"

"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep…" Steve muttered

"Wait! Wait! Hold on! How is this now about me?"

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?"

She drowned out their bickering, thoroughly tired of it. Rogers was beginning to lose her good opinion with the constant back and forth between them. She was suddenly filled with a desire to open her mouth and let all the festering vitriol out, to let it see the light of day so she could corrupt it with her rage. Her usually well suppressed cravings for violence were flooding to the surface. All the while, a treacherous voice was whispering to her subconscious.

 _Will throwing someone through a window ease this pressure? It sounds worth a go._

"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor said. _Yes, she should start with him, revenge for all his comments about her height, how fun it will be_. "You treat your champions with such mistrust?"

"Are you boys really that naïve?" Romanov asked, "S.H.I.E.L.D. monitors potential threats,"

 _Romanov is a liar. She will betray her soon enough. She should kill her_.

"Captain America's on threat watch?" Banner asked incredulously.

"We all are," Yan spat, her lips burning with the effort of holding back all the angry words she wanted to let out.

 _They are all threats. They all have to die. Everyone is a threat_.

"Wait, you're on that list?" Stark laughed. "Are you above or below angry bees?"

 _He is annoying. She should rip his tongue out._

"Stark, so help me god, if you make one more wise-crack – "

"Threat! Verbal threat! I feel threatened!"

"Show some respect,"

"Respect what?"

There was a terrible babble in her mind, all these vicious thoughts swirling round and round, drumming on the inside of her skull desperate to be let out like angry bees. Angry bees were very dangerous, they _should_ be on threat watch. She couldn't think, couldn't shake the red mist clouding her senses. She just wanted to scream. Her fists were tightening around the edges of the table she had been leaning against.

 _No the babble is outside, it's them, all them. She should make them stop._

"Shut up!" Yan yelled, crushing the metal beneath her fingers. The arguing stopped as they turned to look at her, but the buzzing continued. "Did you listen to a word I said? I told you it was dangerous. I'm beginning to think you brought me in just so you could say you'd taken precautions, so you could pretend you knew what you were doing, but you didn't,"

"You speak of control, yet you court chaos" Thor added sternly. "You humans are so petty… and tiny,"

"As if you can talk!" she snapped. "Your brother is threatening the existence of this galaxy – and yes it is the entire galaxy if Thanos gets the Tesseract – for the sake of a familial dispute!"

"That is not quite –" he began to defend himself.

"I am not finished yet! Tiny? May I remind you that when we fought last time it ended in unanimous defeat for you! And it had nothing to do with height!"

"Agent, you need to calm down," Fury warned her.

"Calm down? I'm yelling, not killing people! Though of course I assume you're worried I'm about to start, such a shame you can't fire weapons of mass destruction in here to stop me,"

Her sarcasm was usually incredibly well contained, probably because she'd be likely to say a lot of inexcusable things such as accusing her boss of plotting to assassinate her or insulting a demigod on the basis of his family. But that was preferable to listening to the voices and chucking her supposed team mates out of a window. She closed her eyes for a moment as she again tried to drown out the sounds of Stark and Rogers arguing about who was the more reprehensible. With a herculean effort she forced down the overwhelming rage and spite in order to try and think clearly. She knew something was terribly wrong, when it came to emotions she was never this out of control.

When she reopened her eyes again, her vision filled with flashing spots from the heavy kneading of her fingers, and her gaze fell upon the glowing blue of the sceptre. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that all the infighting had really kicked off once that thing had come into the mix, before that it had been perfectly civil. Then again it could just be Stark.

"Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds," Steve snarled and her suspicion was confirmed. Such behaviour didn't seem likely coming from him and it couldn't have been the stress getting to him, the man had fought in the Second World War.

 _And if it's doing this to me, what the hell is it doing to Banner?_

"Yeah, this is a team…" the man in questioned muttered with a resigned sigh.

"Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his – "

 _No! Mistake!_

"Where? You're renting my room," Banner asked mockingly, gesturing in the vague direction of Loki's cell.

"The cell was just – " Fury began to back track.

 _This is gonna be one hell of a fight._

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't!" he interrupted.

Yan was watching the scientist as his movements became more and more erratic. The imminent threat had allowed her to regain control and now adrenalin was beginning to flow through her veins.

"I know, I tried," he said bitterly and at the shocked looks that greeted this statement he continued, retreating step after step towards the sceptre. "I got low, I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spat it out. So I moved on, I focused on helping other people. I was good until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk. You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanov? You wanna know how I stay calm?"

His voice was rising angrily with every syllable, his shoulders curling in as if he was trying to fold himself away and out of existence. She would almost feel sorry for the man, she could understand at least part of what he felt, but not when he was gripping the sceptre like his life depended on it. She drew her guns.

"Those won't work,"

"I reckon it's still worth a try," She said quietly. "Just put down the sceptre Banner"

He glanced down at his hand surprised and gingerly released the weapon, stepping away with measured movements. One of the holoscreens started flashing and beeping, catching his attention and he went to it, making sure to keep as much distance as possible between him and everyone else.

"Sorry, kids. You don't get to see my party trick after all," he said, sighing as he tapped at the screen examining the data.

"You have located the Tesseract?" Thor asked.

"I can get there faster," Stark boasted, once again sounding like an excited child.

"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard, no human is a match for it," Thor commanded.

"Seconded, the sooner we get that thing away from here the better," Yan agreed, trying to claw back some respectability after her previous outbursts. "The sceptre too, it's messing with us,"

"You're not going alone!" Rogers ordered Stark as he made to leave, grabbing hold of his arm only to for the self-declared genius to slap his hand down.

"You gonna stop me?" he snapped.

"Put on the suit, let's find out,"

 _Oh great, just when you think you're making progress._

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man,"

"Put on the suit,"

"Oh, my God!" Banner exclaimed.

And then the world blew up.

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 **Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading :D**


	25. Important notice

**Just to be clear, this story isn't over, just on hiatus as I am struggling with school atm (a levels oh joys) and a lomg term illness.**

 **Hopefully I will get out a new chapter in the next month or so.**

 **Thanks**


	26. Chapter 21

**Hi everyone!**

 **I'm back! I have survived the past couple of months of exams and now have some actual free time in which to write! (Any motivation you can swing my way helps of course ;)**

 **Right, well I'll get straight down to it: warnings in this chapter for violence and some gore and of course swearing ;)**

 **Hope you enjoy it!**

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Yan felt the explosion before it reached them, the wave of heat and the juddering shockwaves, heard the boom and the screech of hot air being forced through narrow pipes, saw all the machinery flicker and glitch as the wiring blew out all along the left side of the helicarrier. She cried out for everyone to get down but it was too late. A great ball of fire erupted from the middle of the room as the rising pressure escaped through the vents and tore up the floor. Everyone was thrown in different directions and she saw Natasha and Banner being hurled through the glass opposite to her. She was thankfully the only one to end up outside, so she didn't have to rescue anyone.

This was a good thing seeing as in the first few minutes after the blast she was unable to focus, plummeting in free fall in a dizzying spin as the Saran began to wrap itself around her as she instinctively summoned its full force. The sky suddenly stopped rushing past her and she hung there for a moment, suspended in bright light a few miles below the glittering hull of the helicarrier. One corner of it was enveloped in billowing black smoke pierced by fierce flames and she found herself caught in a hail of debris.

Snapping back to her senses she shot upwards, dodging between chunks of twisted metal and sometimes making contact with her feet, leaping from piece to piece as she neared her goal. She flew round it and caught sight of a fleet of fighter jets bombarding S.H.I.E.L.D.'s floating headquarters with gunfire, blowing up their own quinjets and causing multitudes of mini explosions. She could only hope that her comrades had the situation under control inside because right now it seemed to her that destroying or at least grounding the jets was a priority.

Making for the nearest one she morphed her guns to swords and swiped at the wing, severing it with one clean sweep and sending it into a spiralling plummet. It was close enough to the tarmac runway, having been diving low to strafe the surface and prevent other planes taking off, that it crash-landed without much more damage.

"Does anyone copy? There's a lot of enemy fighters out here," Yan radioed the bridge through her comms.

"I copy, agent," it was Hill. "Got an identity on the birds?"

"Unclear, some of these are S.H.I.E.L.D. jets though," She replied, diving beneath another plane to gouge a long furrow on the underside. It too was brought down. "I'd be willing to bet these are Loki's men, it's likely some of ours are on board. What are my orders?"

"Agent, this is Fury," the gravelly voice cut in. _Yeah, cause I totally wouldn't have guessed._ "Bring them down any way you have to, if we lose another engine we won't be in the air much longer,"

"I got it, looks like one's already slipped through my net, must have landed before the explosion. Brace yourself for an attack on foot. Also, some back up would be nice, they're coming in thick and fast,"

"Stark is working on engine 3 and the God of Thunder is god knows where, you're on your own,"

"Great," she muttered, landing on the nose of a smaller jet to smash through the glass with a fist and tear out the sole occupant to chuck him overboard. A well-aimed kick sent the wreckage spinning into another and both went down in a ball of fire, the pilots opening parachutes and just managing to steer clear of the inferno. She couldn't tell which were S.H.I.E.L.D men and there was no way she was going to kill her own by mistake, especially if they were Clint, so she remained careful, abandoning her usual indiscriminate violence for more passive ways.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a flash of red and gold that could only be Iron man and she dove in his direction to take down the jet that was headed to prevent him fixing the engine. She killed the power with the gift of the tenth guardian and sent it into free fall.

"Stark!" Yan yelled over the wind, landing on the edge of the engine and switching back to guns so she could continue to fire at the remaining jets. "Need anything?"

"Gotta clear the debris before I can kick-start the rotors," he replied and she noted with some approval that his words were stripped bare of the usual mockery. "The fire's a problem, but I got it under control if you keep the rabble of my back,"

"On it," she nodded, "And I can clear the fire too,"

She ran towards the blaze and thrust her arms into the flames up to her shoulders, drawing it to her and away from the engine until it began to die back, at which point she twisted it into a sphere and hurled it at the nearest jet. It twisted just in time to avoid being burnt to a crisp but crashed into one of its compatriots and brought both of them down. Stark whooped, giving her the thumbs up as she flew off again to continue her defence.

But the pilots were learning and just as she was going for one another caught her in a pincer movement, ramming her backwards and then strafing her with bullets. Her armour had deflected most of the attack but the ammunition the jet was using was akin to that of anti-aircraft guns and they tore through her.

 _I feel like fucking swiss cheese._

Her wounds were healed swiftly but the encounter was enough of a distraction for another to slip past her net and bomb another engine, damaging it beyond repair. The helicarrier began to tilt alarmingly as it lost half its power and was losing height rapidly. Almost immediately after, the rotors of a third engine ground to a halt, seemingly without any external force.

"It's Barton, he took out our systems, engine one is down," Fury barked over the comms, "He's headed to the detention centre. Does anybody copy?"

"This is Agent Romanov," came the immediate reply, "I copy,"

"This is Agent Nightmare, I can bring engine one back online but it's going to take time if the system is still corrupted," Yan announced

"That is time we do not have, agent," Fury responded.

"I'm on it,"

He was right; if she immersed herself in the computers now she'd get the engine working again just in time to see the whole thing crash into the ocean. A much more audacious plan was needed here. Sucking the energy from one last plane to try and bolster her stores, she dove beneath the helicarrier. Finding a suitable position right in the middle of the vast expanse that was its hull she started what could possibly turn out to be the end of S.H.I.E.L.D. Concentrating with every ounce of her being she began to expand the control of the gift of the third guardian, drawing as much power as she dared from the embattled engines and pushing up.

For what felt like hours her muscles screamed and her joints popped under the immense strain of thousands of tonnes driving her down, pressure building in her head to an unbearable crescendo. She held fast, refusing to give up on her task, but the ship continued its merciless descent. Drawing on every last reserve she could find, she smashed through the plating of the hull to grab fistfuls of wiring and sent her consciousness along the pathways that lead to the hub of the system. If she could at least get engine one working, there was some hope that she could keep everyone in the air.

As Yan had expected, she was soon entangled in the brutal virus that was tearing through programmes and control structures, shutting down auxiliary networks and diverting power from the bridge. It was evolving; vindictively repelling any attempt to gain access and unravelling code, even going so far as to destroy hardware to prevent S.H.I.E.L.D. technicians from fighting back. When she caught its attention it tried to overwhelm her with a barrage of attacks, but with the whole force of a helicarrier on her side it was no one-sided battle. Under the blaze of her fury it was routed from the system, excised section by section until it been completely subjugated to her will and obliterated.

Finally, she took control of the navigating framework and forced the rotors to turn again, rebooting the engine. Removed as she was from her physical self, a disembodied conscious embedded in electronics, the reduction of pressure on her body was translated into a joyful rush of energy and reams of code.

But the relief was short-lived. Suddenly she was snapped back to her body to agonising spikes of pain riddling her chest. She quickly overcame her confusion, instincts kicking in as she caught sight of a jet circling back to make another run at her, guns blazing as it started firing, gouging furrows in the hull that were speeding towards her. She had no way of escaping the ambush, pinned in place by her duty to slowing the helicarrier and saving her comrades.

Acting as fast as she could she drew a gun and fired a single shot at its fuel tank, which exploded halting the attack mere inches from her side. She released the breath she had been holding with a juddering cough and blood streamed down her chin, having surged up her throat. Her wounds were stubbornly refusing to close whilst all her power was diverted to flying, and it was a tremendous effort to desperately drag air into her lungs.

"We are still losing height, update, now," Fury's stern commands helped her to focus.

"Engine one is back online," Yan replied. "And I'm trying to slow the fall best I can,"

"Nice work, agent,"

"I can't hold it for long, Stark you better get Engine 3 fixed sharpish,"

"I'm working on it," he said defensively. "You sound like shit,"

"Thanks, that really helps," she snapped sarcastically. Surprisingly, there was no quick comeback forthcoming and the line was filled with crackling static. And then she saw a bright flash as Iron man was spat out from the rapidly accelerating rotors.

"There you go," he announced, sounding a little beleaguered. "You can thank me later,"

Yan fell away from the hull and made for the nearest vent to get back inside, her power reserves shrinking with every metre she flew. Staggering in she lay on the floor panting, waiting for the Saran to piece her back together. It was an agonisingly slow process, but eventually she was able to pull herself up to lean against a wall and inject a much needed shot of glucose. She absorbed as much energy as she could from the control panel just above her head and got to her feet. There was no time to waste moping about feeling sorry for herself.

She was feeling decidedly weak and unsteady but she hurried along the corridor, not entirely sure where she was going but hoping she would find her way back to the centre of the fighting. Rounding a corner she almost fell over the prone body of a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent slumped at an uncomfortable angle against the wall. She had no time to check if she was ok for she had surprised a squadron of Loki's men leaving a weapons store room with what looked suspiciously like the produce of Phase 2.

She got to work, morphing into a wolf and crushing them in the narrow confines of the corridor and head-butting another hard enough to knock him back by several metres, cracking his helmet so that it split into two halves, revealing his face. It was Manning, thankfully relatively unharmed and now unconscious. Shifting back to human form she relocked the door to the store room and unveiled the other agents in the hope of finding people she recognised. She was rewarded with the discovery of Wilson, who would probably come away from the experience with little more than a few broken ribs.

"Nightmare, I need back up in the cell room," Coulson's request came over the comms.

"On my way," She replied, flying down the corridors towards him.

She was just approaching the door when a shockwave of energy pass through her, similar to the energy signature of the Tesseract. The slight distortion to it suggested that it was the feedback from one of the Phase 2 weapons she had been arguing so fiercely about mere minutes ago.

But when Yan finally entered the room it was to find Coulson slumped against a wall, fingers still limply grasping a gun, crimson blood stain rapidly spreading across his chest.

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 **Thanks for reading! And don't forget to leave a review, it makes the author happy!**


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